And a day The Phantom of the Opera the curtain has fallen. It seems impossible but it will finally happen this Sunday, April 16, when the musical, one of the most famous in history, will greet the lights of broadway who has seen her shine for 35 years.
One of the most successful works of the king of musicals, the Briton Andrew Lloyd Webber, It is the longest running show on the bill. And with his farewell this Sunday at the Majestic Theater in New York City, it will also end an era for the world’s most famous theater district.
Without a doubt, it will be a before and an after The Phantom of the Opera for Broadway musicals.
More than 14 thousand functions
Spanning more than three decades, the show has had more than 14,000 performances since then its premiere on January 9, 1988, always in the same room, with capacity for 1600 spectators. Only the Covid-19 pandemic forced them to be interrupted for a period, between March 12, 2020 and October 22, 2021.
While the comeback was good, the musical never fully recovered, in terms of takings in the busy Broadway competition, and its producers decided to call it quits.
In principle, The farewell should have taken place in February this year, but the farewell announcement triggered ticket sales and for this up to now the lowering of the curtain has been lengthened.
The reasons for the end
THE high production costs They have a lot to do with this sad decision, as the musical never fully recovered from the effects of the pandemic and confinement.
In the mighty and complex marketplace of Broadway, for a show to leave a balance in your favor he has to raise about three million dollars a week. But the figure obtained from the musical classic, after its return to the stage after the pandemic, reached “just” 800 thousand dollars a week. Those numbers decided his fate.
In the midst of the uproar the news caused in the Broadway theater world, cameron mackintoshone of its producers, said: “It is an unparalleled honor to have presented this musical that has thrilled New York for 35 years. It is something impressive”.
The work
Lloyd Weber’s work is based on the French novel by Gaston Leroux, written in 1910 and has had versions in dozens of cities around the world, including Argentina.
Some impressive figures have accompanied the impressive Broadway run of the iconic musical which has already made its mark, with almost 20 million tickets sold and a gross of over a billion dollars, after an initial investment of 8 million when the curtain went up for the first time.
The story of The Phantom of the Opera is a gothic plot that combines romance, music, terror, mystery and tragedy.
Erik, an enigmatic musical genius, falls madly in love with Cristina, a young and talented artist, who is his inspiration. Erik, however, suffers in secret because due to a disease that deforms part of his face, he hides behind a mask.
For the musical, the make-up work with latex foam on the face of the actor who plays the protagonist to recreate the mask lasts an hour and a half before each performance.
The productive deployment of the musical requires, in addition to dozens of props by function and thousands of meters of fabrics for the more than 200 costumes used by the cast, among many other elements that are part of its appeal.
Although the show that reigned on the stage of the Majestic (opened in 1927 at 245 West 44th Street) will no longer be part of the prestigious Broadway bill, the musical continues to be performed in Londonwhere it is still valid in an even longer version (its premiere was in 1986) but at a lower cost than in New York.
On the other hand, to comfort those nostalgic for this work, Lloyd Weber himself is holding a new version of his classic, in co-production with the actor Antonio Banderas, which will be in Spanish.
Source: Clarin
