Sarah Brightman declared at the London's Royal Albert Hall Concert in 1997, that the song was originally written by Andrew Lloyd Webber for her, the first time he met her.
The Phantom then carries Christine to a bed, where he lays her down and goes on to write his music. When she approaches it, it suddenly moves, causing her to faint. The Phantom leads Christine around his lair, eventually pulling back a curtain to reveal a mannequin dressed in a wedding gown resembling Christine. He sings of his unspoken love for her and urges her to forget the world and life she knew before. He seduces Christine with "his music" of the night, his voice putting her into a type of trance. "The Music of the Night" is sung after the Phantom lures Christine Daaé to his lair beneath the Opera House. 4 Barbra Streisand & Michael Crawford version.Go big or go home, as they say.īooking at Her Majesty’s theatre, London, until 13 February. But the late Maria Björnson’s maximalist designs, from vivid masquerade ball to Degas-style ballet dancers, set the tone for old-school fantasy. The show has a dedication to analogue theatrical effects, from trapdoors and smoke to a skull-topped cane shooting fireballs, and, sure, there’s something hokey about the Phantom playing gondolier in the boat to his subterranean lair. There’s a bit of Hugh Grant about him (the edgier real-life Grant, rather than foppish film version) and he’s rich-voiced in the soaringly romantic All I Ask of You. Rhys Whitfield plays Christine’s more trad love interest, the dashing Raoul. No room to interrogate his status as an abusive incel here, just a good yarn. He’s a Frankenstein’s monster, sinister yet vulnerable, whose eyes “both threaten and adore” and who tells Christine “fear can turn to love”. He handles a tricky role, a stalker and kidnapper who is also an alternative romantic lead. She’s beatific, her tone bright with no harsh glare, all delicate vibrato, fine control and escalating power.Īs the Phantom, Killian Donnelly (a former Jean Valjean in Les Mis) finds a range of colours from a whisper to a roar. Lucy St Louis (who played Diana Ross in Motown the Musical) is an enchanting Christine, the object of the Phantom’s obsession. Winning formulas, of course, still need a refresh, so post-pandemic the show has returned with a new cast.
Lucy St Louis and Killian Donnelly in The Phantom of the Opera.
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