original phantom of the opera movie cast

It is interesting to see how the story stacks up now in comparison to its 1986 debut. Highlights are obvious – it’s hard to hold a candle to ‘The Music of the Night’, after all – and welcome. It’s an overwhelming experience, and the only option is to surrender to Phantom’s chiaroscuro charms.

Director Laurence Connor ups the gothic excess on this production – this is a Phantom wreathed in smoke and fog and spotlighted by silvery moonlight – and the brighter points of the story, such as the opening Hannibal production and second act banger ‘Masquerade’, serve to counterpoint the doomed romance at the heart of the story.Ī post shared by Time Out Sydney music is, of course, fabulous – a 27-piece orchestra brings all the sturm und drang you could want to the proceedings, with veteran music supervisor Guy Simpson pulling out all the stops (quite possibly literally), filling the theatre to the point where you’re just about drowning in the work’s gloomy, dreamy drama. Similarly contained is this production – with the Opera House’s Joan Sutherland Theatre almost bursting at the seams trying to contain production designer Paul Brown’s elaborate, rotating set – at times it feels like we’re looking into an impossibly intricate music box, which is fitting. For all the play’s grandeur, the actual narrative is tightly contained – there’s the girl, her beau, and the tragic monster between them. The spectacle sets his memory afire, and from there we are taken back to 1881, where opera ingenue Christine (Amy Manford) finds herself in the middle of a love triangle between the dashing Raoul and the titular Phantom (Josh Piterman, whose performance, both energetic and melancholy, has also been seen on the West End), a disfigured man who the company believe to be a ghost haunting the opera house. It’s Lot 666 (heh), a vast, reconditioned chandelier that descends over the attending audience before blazing to life.

We open in early 20 th century Paris, naturally, and are introduced to the scenario when the now-aged Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny (Blake Bowden), attends an auction of ephemera from the Paris Opera. They are two separate stagings with different cast and crew, though Opera Australia is involved in both, not unlike their dual productions of West Side Story a few years back. In a historic move, the Phantom is haunting the Sydney Opera House for the first time ever in 2022 – not to be confused with the five-star Handa Opera on the Harbour production from earlier this year. Really, if nobody falls off the stage, you’ve got a five-star experience on your hands. In the hands of a capable company and mounted with flair and no fear of embracing the inherent melodrama, it cannot fail to impress. If there was ever a production that is, for all intents and purposes, impervious to review, it must be Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, a pinnacle work in the field of popular musicals.

Original phantom of the opera movie cast