OCTOBER 9, 1986
It tells the story of a young soprano who becomes the object of obsession for a disfigured musical genius in Paris.
Opening at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London’s West End on October 9, 1986, The Phantom Of The Opera went on to become the second longest running show in the West End, after
Les Miserables. Meanwhile it became Broadway’s longest running show, and continues there to this day.
Based on the 1910 French novel of the same name by Gaston Leroux, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical tells the story of soprano Christine Daae who becomes the obsession of a mysterious, masked musical genius living in the subterranean labyrinth beneath the Paris Opera House. Lloyd Webber wanted to write a romantic musical, and thought Lerouz’s novel might work as its basis. But after watching both the 1925 Lon Chaney and the 1943 Claude Rains film versions of the book, he struggled to make the leap from film to stage.
It was only after he found and read a second-hand copy of the original, out-of-print novel, that he saw a way forward.
Lloyd Webber said: “I was actually writing something else at the time, and I realised that the reason I was hung up was because I was trying to write a major romantic story, and I had been trying to do that ever since I started my career. Then, with the Phantom, it was there!”