Weer veel spannende details in onderstaande quote uit de Daily Mail
The Phantom Of The Opera sequel, Love Never Dies, will open in the West End first, rather than on Broadway, the show’s composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has decided.
He revealed to this column that London ‘will have the edge over everybody’, with the show opening at the Adelphi Theatre in late October or early November. (The original Phantom is still running, at Her Majesty’s, London, 23 years after opening.)
The composer also told me - as I listened to a full orchestra playing his new score - that he wants Ramin Karimloo and Sierra Boggess, who have developed the roles of the Phantom and his protegee, to originate the roles in London.
Ramin is the current Phantom in London, and Sierra was in a Phantom production in Las Vegas.
The idea is to open Love Never Dies in London, Toronto, New York and Shangai in quick succession. It’s a mammoth undertaking that, combined, will cost many millions. Tickets for the Adelphi show are expected to go on sale in late May or early June.
‘The Phantom has been so extraordinary in my life - the biggest musical I’ve been involved with so far. Somehow, after nearly 25 years, to come back to it again, it releases a lot,’ Andrew old me, his voice trailing away wistfully.
Rehearsals with three full casts will take place in South-East London from August 17 for three months. Soon after its Adelphi inaugural, it will open at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre and then, around next April, the cast from Toronto will drop down to Broadway - winding up in all likelihood at the Neil Simon Theatre.
Sometime, in the middle of all this, a production of Love Never Dies will open in Shanghai. It’s a highly ambitious schedule, such a roll-out around the globe would normally take two years or more.
‘Are you nuts?’ I asked director Jack O’Brien, who has been working with Andrew, lyricist Glenn Slater and designer Bob Crowley. He laughed wryly: ‘Some would think so. I prefer to think of myself as enthusiastic.
‘It makes sense, though, rather than spend time doing this over a course of two or three years.’
He added that by rehearsing it all together, all the main casts will have a sense of ‘ownership’ of the project. However, it’s Ramin and Sierra who have been laying down the blueprint.
For much of this week they were to be found at Abbey Road studios with Andrew, his regular recording team, Jack, Glenn, plus a 90-piece orchestra, laying down tracks from Love Never Dies for a concept album that may be released before or after the show opens.
‘We don’t believe in the recession in here,’ the composer joked, as I watched conductor Simon Lee put the orchestra through its paces.
The lavish score will have to be re-adjusted for the stage production, which will feature a much smaller orchestra (probably about 26 musicians).
From what I’ve heard, it sounds like the best work Andrew has produced in decades. I confess, I didn’t know he still had it in him - it’s a score of high passion, full of longing and regret.
Director O’Brien noted that the music - and the show’s story - are about maturity. ‘Not only that, but a vast repository of his [Lloyd Webber’s] own life and themes are coming back and being newly re-explored.’
He added pointedy: ‘He’s not phoning this in - it’s all new stuff.’
Indeed, it is a completely different sound to the main melodies in the original Phantom show - however, the composer noted that there are a couple of tiny motifs that will be familiar to the many millions who have seen Phantom on stage or screen.
Love Never Dies finds the Phantom living in a fairground on Coney Island. He is somehow reunited with Christine, now married to Raoul and with a son.
Slater observed that the first Phantom was driven, emotionally, by youthful insecurities. This older Phantom is driven by adult regrets. ‘It’s about choices and consequences,’ O’Brien added. ‘This is about the road not taken.’
The director paid tribute to Lloyd Webber’s ‘passion’.
‘It is like the last flowering of a great era of lyric romanticism - the theatre doesn’t seem to have that any more.
‘No one coming up feels this way, with that passion. And here’s a story that no one knows better than he knows. Not only has he produced it, but he’s outdone himself.’
Bron http://www.dailymail.co.uk
In dezelfde column staat nog het een en ander over John Barrowman (mogelijk in La Cage later dit jaar) die de rol van Raoul zing op het conceptalbum van ‘Love Never Dies’