Phantom of the Opera
May. 16th, 2020 02:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearLast night, we finally got around to watching the 25th anniversary staging of Phantom of the Opera that was released for viewing by Andrew Lloyd Webber a few weeks ago. Dave had never seen it before, and I hadn't seen the full show in decades - and it turned out to be very different to how I remembered it!
I know I saw it on stage at least once as a teenager, and I remember I was obsessed with the Michael Crawford sound track for ages afterwards. I remembered most of the songs really well - but not how they fit into the story.
In my head, it was much more of a proper (and less problematic) romance between Christine and the Phantom. My head canon had the two of them singing All I Ask Of You to each other, rather than it being sung by Christine and Raoul. To me, Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again was Christine pining for the Phantom after his departure, rather than grieving for her deceased father. And Point of No Return was Christine and the Phantom declaring their love for each other properly, rather than it being part of the show-within-the-show and Christine not knowing it was the Phantom playing the other part.
So, teenage fantasies shattered, and the Phantom revealed as a creepy, murdering, kidnapping stalker who tries to use emotional blackmail to get a young woman's love. I kind of knew he wasn't a true romantic hero, but still...
The music was great, though, and I very much enjoyed singing along very badly to most of it.
Though it does rather suggest that Phantom of the Opera was my Twilight... Oh dear...
I know I saw it on stage at least once as a teenager, and I remember I was obsessed with the Michael Crawford sound track for ages afterwards. I remembered most of the songs really well - but not how they fit into the story.
In my head, it was much more of a proper (and less problematic) romance between Christine and the Phantom. My head canon had the two of them singing All I Ask Of You to each other, rather than it being sung by Christine and Raoul. To me, Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again was Christine pining for the Phantom after his departure, rather than grieving for her deceased father. And Point of No Return was Christine and the Phantom declaring their love for each other properly, rather than it being part of the show-within-the-show and Christine not knowing it was the Phantom playing the other part.
So, teenage fantasies shattered, and the Phantom revealed as a creepy, murdering, kidnapping stalker who tries to use emotional blackmail to get a young woman's love. I kind of knew he wasn't a true romantic hero, but still...
The music was great, though, and I very much enjoyed singing along very badly to most of it.
Though it does rather suggest that Phantom of the Opera was my Twilight... Oh dear...
