‘Phantom’ chandelier remains iconic throughout the show’s 35 years
There have been 16 Phantoms of the Opera on Broadway – from Michael Crawford, who originated the role, to Ben Crawford (no relation), who will ring down the curtain, after an unprecedented 35 year run, on April 16.
But the real star of “The Phantom of the Opera” has remained unchanged for 13,981 performances.
It is, of course, The Chandelier. The one that – SPOILER ALERT! – almost comes crashing down on the audience, as a result of the Phantom’s nefarious doings. What it actually does is drop, and then swoop toward the stage in a parabola that is as much a testament to theater ingenuity as it is a defiance of physics.
The chandelier was the talk of the show, long before Andrew Lloyd Webber’s blockbuster hit arrived on Broadway in January 1988, after taking the West End by storm. Everyone knew about the chandelier. Everyone except Fran Lebowitz.
“The opening of ‘Phantom’ was an AIDS benefit and I was on the committee, so I took my mother to the opening,” said the humorist. “When the chandelier began to fall, I screamed. I didn’t know it was going to fall. I disrupted the whole opening. I was so embarrassed. My mother said, ‘Everyone knew this!’ Because she read about theater all the time.”
Legends of the fall
That chandelier, unlike the cast, has remained unchanged during the show’s record-breaking run. So has the man in charge of it.
“I’ve been blessed,” said Alan Lampel, head electrician, who has been with “Phantom” through its entire New York run – longer than almost anyone else connected with it.
“It’s a beautiful show, and the lighting design is a spectacular thing to have worked on,” he said. “Didn’t we all grow up with the story of ‘The Phantom of the Opera’? Wasn’t it all about the chandelier and
how he terrorized everybody with it?”
In fact, there is a little more to the story than a falling chandelier – though that episode was key in Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel, the classic 1925 Lon Chaney silent film, and every subsequent “Phantom” rendition.
It was inspired by a real incident. The counterweight for the Paris Opera House chandelier really did fall once in the 1870s (its suspending wire had been damaged by fire), killing one and injuring several others. It was this tragedy that sparked the story of Erik, the masked “opera ghost” who terrorizes the denizens of the ornate Palais Garnier.
In Webber’s version, of course, the Phantom is less a monster and more a matinee idol – singing such swoony ballads as “Music of the Night.” Leroux never thought of that. Nor did he think to name the chandelier. But the Broadway production did. It’s called “Ruthie II.”
“It’s named after (director) Hal Prince’s longtime assistant, Ruth Mitchell,” Lampel said. “That name was come up with in an actual bidding, to have the honor of naming the chandelier. We did that with a number of items on the show, and it was all a fundraiser driven through Equity
fights AIDS.”
Who submitted the winning bid, Lampel can’t tell you. Nor can he tell you the names that wound up on the other items: the Phantom’s organ, for instance, or the monkey music box. “Don’t ask me to tell you those names,” he said.
Let there be light
Making Ruthie II drop on cue, for 13,000-plus performances, is no mean trick.
“I’m in charge of keeping my eye on the electrics of the show,” said Lampel, who is one of eight people in his department (the Majestic Theater also has its own house electrician).
That means he supervises, 6 performances a week, the automated apparatus that hoists the chandelier into place above the audience, and then causes it to plummet – though not exactly in free fall.
“It’s hoisted off the stage using a pair of looped cables, so once it’s picked up, it can roll towards or away from the stage,” he said. The rigging has two motors. One takes the chandelier about midpoint in the auditorium; another lifts it to the place where it will hang.
“When it comes down, it gets released by that same motor to come down at a certain speed – a dedicated speed of course – and it comes down and bottoms out into those loops, if you will,” he said.
Meanwhile, there is some sleight ofhand going on with the sound and the lights. “When it hits that loop, the music is ending, the crescendo happens, and at the same moment a big flash goes off that blinds everybody that’s looking at it – in theory,” he said. “Then it goes to a complete blackout. The next thing you see is the chandelier sitting there disheveled.”
It’s an spectacular, memorable bit of theater magic – though there have been a couple of nights, through the years, where they’ve had to forego it.
“We’ve kept it from coming down a couple of times,” he said. Once, he recalls, part of the dust cover failed to come off on cue as the chandelier was hoisted into place. “There was a concern about that, because we didn’t want the dust cover to fall on anyone,” he said. “But the show went just fine without it.”
Road show
In addition to his stint the Broadway production, Lampel went on tour with the show – supervising the rigging when the Phantom wreaked havoc on the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Wang Theatre in Boston, and other venues.