New York – A glittering farewell, standing ovation from the audience, music boxes, Persian costumes and a few tears. “The Phantom of the Opera” closed the longest-running Broadway production in history Sunday night. And she did it his way, in the sign of triumph. The curtain at Majestic Theater on one of the greatest musicals ever fell almost 14,000 times, but definitively. There will be no tomorrow, or at least for now. Last night in the theater on West 44th Street, near Times Squarewas by invitation and saw fans of the show in the audience, fans who have enjoyed the show dozens of times, or as Dick Mooerof Denver, which has grown to two hundred, and more, including some actors who have acted in these thirty-five years, including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Glenn Close.
The work
The “Phantom” has become a lifestyle for many, a school of inspiration for hundreds of actors, a model for dozens of aspiring directors, the place to declare themselves eternal love, because here was love and music, hope and illusion. The story, loosely based on the novel by Gaston Lerouwritten in 1910, describes the desperate and poetic love of a brilliant musician with a disfigured face who lives in the basement of the Opéra in Paris for the young soprano Christine Daaé, who is in love with the elderly viscount Raoul DeChagny. The story, magical, romantic and dark, was staged for two and a half hours, continuously interrupted by applause, not only dedicated to the main actors but to everyone, including the iconic music box monkey, who was part of the scenic effects of the musical.
The evening
“It was really incredible what happened,” commented the composer of the work, the Oscar winner Andrew Lloyd Webber, who dedicated the show to his son Nicholas, who died of cancer three weeks ago at the age of 43. All the protagonists took the stage, including the producer, Cameron Mackintosh, while behind them appeared the images of those who were part of this extraordinary journey and who have passed away, including the historic director Harold Smith Prince, who died in 2019. The round of applause was emotional, many in the audience, wearing the clothes of the main characters to celebrate their idols, could not hold back the tears.
The numbers
An unrepeatable story closes, in the name of success and great music: more than twenty million viewers, more than 1.3 billion dollars collected since the day of its debut, in January 1988. In thirty-five years, “The Phantom of the Opera” has become a worldwide phenomenon, performed in seventeen languages and in 45 countries, and grossing more than six billion dollars globally. But all stories, even the most glittering, have a countdown, and that of the musical had begun in September, when the production announced the end. The curtain was actually supposed to fall in February, but it was pushed back by two months, to accommodate the thousands of requests that still flooded the box office, and which resulted in a gross of $3.6 million in the last week, three times more than the previous ones. Broadway closes, but that’s not all. The show will continue to live in London, and in the Czech Republic, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. New productions are expected in China, in May, in Italy, in July, and in Spain, in October. Will he come back to New York one day? “Maybe,” Mackinthos said. But the time has come for the show to rest.