My First Love Was the Phantom
I was 10 years old. It was a Friday night and I was staying over at my friend David’s house. With his mother’s supervision, we made pizza with english muffins and sat down to watch a “classic” movie he’d told me about called The Phantom of the Opera.
Filmed in 1925 as a silent motion picture, it told the dark love story of Erik, a disfigured man who lived in a private world underneath a Paris opera house. This “angel of music” secretly gave a young woman named Christine vocal lessons. She was his obedient student until Raoul came along and ruined the whole thing. It’s then that we discover Erik is no angel at all, but instead, a violent and jealous man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Despite his rage and cruely, there is something lovable and pitiful about Erik that you can’t help sympathizing with.
It was a love story that has stayed with me always.
In 1995, I had the great pleasure of seeing the musical version of The Phantom of the Opera in St. Louis. I was moved by the experience. Haunted by it.
I recently learned that Andrew Lloyd Webber has written a sequel, called Phantom: Once Upon Another Time. Fans are pretty upset about it, saying the whole thing sounds ridiculous and will ruin the whole story.
I disagree. I think Andrew Lloyd Webber is smart enough to know this has to be a solid piece. It isn’t as if he’s going to write it haphazardly. I’m sure many revisions will be made before the public sees it and that all details will be carefully considered. It debuts in London in November 2009.
I’m certain the next chapter will find its way to America too, and someday, I look forward to seeing it. Until then, I’ll always have “the music of the night”.
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