It’s the longest-running show on Broadway, and in 2012 it celebrated its 10,000th performance! The Phanton of the Opera won a strong of awards including the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1988. The musical opened on London’s West End in 1986 and then on Broadway in New York in 1988. The original cast of the 1986 West End production included Sarah Brightman (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s then wife) as Christine and Michael Crawford as the Phantom. In fact, the story includes a number of made-up operas called Hannibal and the Phantom’s masterpiece Don Juan Triumphant.

The style of Lloyd Webber’s music is deliberately operatic in style, while still remaining committed to its West End/Broadway origins. Lloyd Webber said: “I was actually writing something else at the time, and I realised that the reason I was hung up was because I was trying to write a major romantic story, and I had been trying to do that ever since I started my career. There had already been two film versions of the novel, but never a musical. The idea for Phantom came from Lloyd Webber, who contacted legendary producer Cameron Mackintosh and suggested creating a musical based on Leroux’s novel.

Love me phantom of the opera lyrics