Yeston and Kopit Musical

[midnightangel]

We went to the Virgin Records store in Flordia while on vacation and I found a copy of this soundtrack. So I bought it for twenty bucks, thinking "It's the most successful non-Broadway musical-- it has to be good." But it sounds like a musical. It doesn't sound like an opera, nor does it have the feel of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical. I mean, there's no Raoul! There's a music critic/Count named Phillippe de Chadon, but the only reason Christine goes with him is because her true love, the Phantom, is dead.

If anyone else has seen/heard this musical, I'd like to hear your opinions. Unless I'm mistaken, the Phantom mini series is what this is based on (or vice versa), so I'd like to hear thoughts on that too, if you've seen it.

[phantomgirl110]

I'm not familiar with this musical myself (although I think a friend may have sent me the music several years ago; I have a hard time getting into a musical I haven't visually seen first, with very few exceptions), but the Charles Dance miniseries (which is one of my favorite versions, despite how much it differs from canon) was based on it, you're correct. (Well, they'd written the musical and were hoping to take it to Broadway when the ALW version opened, so they shelved their project. Then they rewrote it as the Dance miniseries for TV and it was a hit, so they got some new investors and were able to put the show onstage, just not on Broadway.)

In the miniseries, Phillipe basically is Raoul but with the wrong name and a few added character bits: he and Christine were childhood friends and when he sees Christine years later singing at a country fair, he tells her she should go to the opera and audition, not even realizing she's his old friend until much later. It's odd that he's a music critic in the musical. It's also odd that Christine's not really in love with him, because she is in the miniseries.

I highly recommend the miniseries, personally. Dance's Erik is not anything like Leroux!Erik, he's very soft-spoken and polite through most of the film, but he's wonderful nonetheless. The music used is all real opera and it's performed BEAUTIFULLY (by real opera singers who dubbed Dance and Teri Polo), and it has the distinction of being the only version of POTO ever filmed at the Opera Garnier.

[midnightangel]

I watched clips from the miniseries, and it looked fine. It as a musical... not so much. It doesn't have a dark, phantomy feel with it's music. The first song is not a romantic, slightly operatic, or dark piece. It's Christine singing "lalalala lalalala lalala la la.... Melodie, Melodie, my kind of melodie gentle and flowy and free. Soaring above every rooftop, whispering under each tree... Melodie, melodie, my kind of melodie de Paris!" That's how we meet her. A carefree, happy girl with lofty ambitions but no real drive until the Count is like, "Hey. Come to the Opera. You could get trained." And she's like, "Wow! Thank you random stranger!"

I thought "Think of Me" set up the storyline for "Phantom of the Opera" much better. It didn't feel as forced. It had undertones of the plot without really giving away the plot and being like, "Let's all sing the exposition!"

[phantomgirl110]

Awww, that's too bad. How do you think it is as a stand-alone musical, not an adaptation of POTO? I mean, is the music good (if not Phantom-y) at least?

[midnightangel]

As a stand alone? The music is okay-- I'm not a huge fan of it, but then, it's because I'm a phan of the POTO story, so...

Here's a version of one of the songs, Home and you can judge for yourself.