It won the 1986 Olivier Award and the 1988 Tony Award for Best Musical, with Crawford winning the Olivier and Tony for Best Actor in a Musical. The musical opened in London's West End in 1986 and on Broadway in New York in 1988, in a production directed by Harold Prince and starring English classical soprano Sarah Brightman (Lloyd Webber's then-wife) as Christine Daaé, and Michael Crawford as the Phantom. Based on the 1910 French novel of the same name by Gaston Leroux, it tells the story of a beautiful soprano, Christine Daaé, who becomes the obsession of a mysterious, masked musical genius living in the subterranean labyrinth beneath the Paris Opéra House. The Phantom of the Opera is a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Charles Hart, and a libretto by Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe. 1988 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Broadway Musical.1986 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best New Musical.1986 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical.(The PHANTOM'S score lies open on the desk. (And, before he can question her further, she has disappeared) (She moves off into the surrounding blackness)Īnd there have been too many accidents. GIRY (starts from her daze and turns to go) The world forgot him, but I never can.For in this darkness I have seen him again. They never found him it was said he had died. They boasted he had once built for the Shah of Persia, a maze of mirrors.Ī freak of nature.more monster than man. GIRY (trance-like, as she retraces the past)Īnd there was.I shall never forget him: a man.locked in a cage.Ī prodigy, monsieur! Scholar, architect, musician.Īnd an inventor too, monsieur. GIRY (She has glanced nervously about her and suddenly deciding to trust him, cuts in): Very well. I don't know what I've seen.Please don't ask me, monsieur. Monsieur, don't ask me - I know no more than anyone else. (ALL cower in suspense as the music crescendos, until suddenly, his figure evaporates) He reaches out, grasps the chain that holds the secret engagement ring, and rips it from her throat) (CHRISTlNE, mesmerized, approaches as the PHANTOM beckons her.

(He takes from under his robe an enormous bound manuscript) With dreadful wooden steps he descends the stairs and takes the centre of the stage)ĭid you think that I had left you for good? Dressed all in crimson, with a death's head visible inside the hood of his robe, the PHANTOM has come to the party. (At the height of the activity a grotesque figure suddenly appears at the lop of the staircase. He whirls her back into the dance, as the music heads towards its climax.) Eventually RAOUL rescues her and holds her tightly. But too many of her partners seem to be replicas of the PHANTOM, and each spins her with increasing force. (Dance section, in which CHRISTINE, almost coquettish almost jittery, goes from man to man. She is admiring a new acquisition: an engagement ring from RAOUL, which she has attached to a gold chain around her neck.) (They clink glasses and move off RAOUL and CHRISTINE emerge. (The ENSEMBLE activity becomes background, as ANDRE, FIRMIN, MEG, GIRY, PIANGI and CARLOTTA come to the fore, glasses in hand) Among the GUESTS are four carrying strange percussion instruments: a monkey with cymbals, a toy soldier with a drum, a triangle, bells. (The gauze lifts fully to reveal the staircase of the opera house. The two skeletons see each other and approach nervously) FIRMIN arrives.He is also dressed as a skeleton in an opera cape. He is dressed as a skeleton in an opera cape.

The guests (whom we cannot yet see clearly) are in fancy dress, a peacock, a lion, a dragon, Mephistopheles, a highwayman, a clown, knights, ladies, an executioner. (A gauze half conceals the tableau of guests at the opera ball. THE STAIRCASE OF THE OPERA HOUSE, Six Months Later

SCENE EIGHT - Down Once More Track Down This Murderer SCENE FIVE - Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again Wandering Child Bravo, Monsieur Phantom of the Opera, with some modifications to match my copy of the libretto. 'The Phantom of the Opera' Lyrics - Act II

The phantom of the opera lyrics parts