Phantom of the Opera: Mostly Original Broadway, some 25th

[cahn]

So the 25th Anniversary edition of Phantom of the Opera came up on Spotify Radio, and I ended listening to about half an hour of it (the last half hour, so I could get the revised ending) and then giving it up and going back to the original Broadway recording. And then I felt the need to write a lot about it.

Is it my imagination, or has Broadway, at least big-production Broadway, gotten a lot more… emotional… in the last twenty-five years? There was just so much aaaaaangst in the 25th-anniversary recordings of both POTO and Les Mis that I feel wasn’t in the original (and which I wasn’t really a fan of). It’s almost like they feel that if they don’t shriek and wail that we won’t actually believe that they’re feeling any real emotion.

Anyway, it’s interesting to me that in terms of the musical itself, I’ve only gotten more rabid about Les Miserables, while POTO has not aged well in my reaction to it. POTO is kind of a terrible story, boring narratively (oh hey love triangle, never seen that one before!) and thematically incoherent, and full of Relationship Fail. (Even when we were kids, my sister and I used to make fun of “I must go! …Order your fine horses!” It never, I think, even occurred to us to take Christine/Phantom seriously.) And worst of all where I’m concerned, the music is just so boring (because let’s face it, I will still listen to your musical if it has terrible plot and no themes and horrible messages about relationships). I present to you Music of the Night… Masquerade… need I say more?

And yet the original Broadway recording is still special to me. Some of that, I’m sure, is early childhood imprinting. But also — also the triumvirate of Michael Crawford, Sarah Brightman, and Steve Barton transcends the poor material they were given to work with.

Michael Crawford — I kind of almost feel like I don’t even have to say anything about him. He’s genuinely creepy as the Phantom, and part of the creepiness is that he is always so in control, both vocally and character-wise, so that a) the control itself is all kinds of creepy, and b) all he has to do is drop just a smidgen of that control and it is extremely effective at portraying his emotion, way more so than the hysterics the poor guy on the 25th-anniversary recording was having to resort to. And it is amazing to me that he can sell “Music of the Night,” which as I’ve said has got to be just about the most boring solo song ever. (I mean, it has, like, four verses of the same freaking not-very-interesting three-chord tune! I-V-IV-I for the win lose!) But he does.

Steve Barton just, just, just. I’m kind of in love with his voice. I think actually one of my favorite bits is the prologue, where he gets to be old and doddery and full of regrets, and it’s very different from anything else he sings in the whole musical, and he just sells it to me SO HARD. But just in general I feel like he is an amazing voice actor -- he can do an extremely wide range of emotions in his singing, as well as an extremely delicate touch. And his voice-charisma is so compelling that whenever he sings anything, no matter how idiotic the lyrics are (and man, Raoul’s lyrics are pretty idiotic), I’m all “Okay, Steve Barton! I’m totally on your side! Sure, yeah, plan to trap the Phantom in the Opera House by closing all the doors because you have any evidence ever that he actually uses the doors? I’m totally up for you doing that!” I totally buy his attraction/love for Christine and his naive but energetic plans to deal with the Phantom. Raoul is in love and arrogant and foolhardy and brave and afraid and worried and aristocratic and well-mannered and gentle and optimistic and jealous and good-hearted — it’s sort of a complicated mix, or can be, and Steve Barton just gets it all.

And I think Sarah Brightman’s portrayal of Christine is understated and absolutely lovely. There are bits where I think I might like a trifle more emotion (Angel of Music seems like it ought to be a little more ecstatic) but in general I love the understatedness for bringing across the naivete of the character, along with the almost hypnotic effect the Phantom has on her, and the realization she comes to at the end. “I gave my mind blindly” — 25th-anniversary does it a lot more angrily, but this works SO much better, to me, as a combination of bitter (which of course she is) but also the dawning of an understanding — otherwise the part where she kisses him makes much less sense to me.

Also, the guy who plays Firmin always makes me totally laugh, whenever he says/sings anything (er, sometimes inappropriately) — I really like him.

Anyway, I still love this recording, but I don't think I can deal with anyone else singing POTO. (Though I would welcome recommendations!)

Also, note to self: do not listen to Phantom/Webber’s Don Juan Triumphant in close proximity to Don Giovanni like this time, because, um. Yeah. Webber? Not even close.

Comments

[skygiants]

Oh, Phantom! I will always love it deeply, although my love grows more and more cheerfully ironic with every passing year. It's just so silly! Nobody's very bright! The Phantom is the creepiest terrible brainwashing boyfriend! Everyone has the worst cunning plans! THE WORST. I just want to pat them all on the heads

(Fun fact: if I am not wrong, the 25th Anniversary Phantom is the same guy as 25th Anniversary Enjolras, but for me he will always be the guy from PHANTOM OF THE OPERA: LOVE NEVER DIES, aka The Most Hilariously Bad Idea in the History of Musical Theater.)

[cahn]

Hee, D and I were just talking today about how in the book, the Phantom is supposed to be this genius in several different fields, whereas in the musical, he... thinks he's much cooler than he actually is...

I had no idea he was the same guy! Now I gotta go listen to 25th Anniversary Enjolras again. I remember your writeup of LOVE NEVER DIES, which was hilarious! I wish I could have seen it, because wow hilarious, but reading your writeup was the next best thing :)

But man, the original Broadway cast recording I will always always be in love with, yes.

[skygiants]

Ha, yes, but on the other hand there's the whole thing where book!Phantom REALLY just wants to settle down to a nice middle-class bourgeois life with Christine! Have a nice little house and a nice little wife and go for walks on Sunday! SUPER GLAMOROUS, PHANTOM. TRES MYSTERIOUS AND SEXY.

Yep, same guy! And Grantaire is Raoul, which is in a way even more hilarious (especially given that Hadley Fraser and Ramin Karimloo are BFF and their Enjolras and Grantaire remain the most mutually affectionate EVER.)

[cahn]

Oh, right, I'd forgotten about that! (Now I want the AU where Phantom gets that, and let's see how fast he gets totally bored...)

Oh, that's really hilarious. Now I'm definitely going to go give those all a re-listen.

[thistleingrey]

also the triumvirate of Michael Crawford, Sarah Brightman, and Steve Barton transcends the poor material

Yeah. Evita and Sunset Blvd work better as musicals from a soundtrack/audio-only perspective, that is, musically, and IMO both are underrated, perhaps because they don't feature a virgin to be protected, bah fucking humbug. Sunset's bouts of superficiality suit the subject matter, for me. For that matter, JC Superstar is tighter musically than Phantom, though perhaps partly by luck?

The only ALW musical I've seen staged is Phantom, heh. (Plus the film with Emmy Rossum.)

Re: Don Giovanni: also skip Dvorak's Eighth, though I've forgotten which movement--if it's not the source of the chromatic progression, I will eat a hat.

[cahn]

I do like the music from Evita rather better. (I'm not familiar with Sunset Blvd, although now I will have to go look it up on Spotify :) ) The interesting thing to me is that ALW was clearly trying hard with Phantom, harder than with, say, Evita, to do Musically Interesting Things (the fugue, the chromaticisms, etc.) and they... just don't work very well.

Yup, I also have only ever seen ALW staged (which I loved, but I was, like, ten), and the film as well (which I found deadly boring), and I saw the Evita movie with Madonna, which I liked very much until I heard the Broadway recording, which demonstrates how shallow the movie singing was :)

And ahhhhh, I need to go listen to Dvorak's Eighth!

[zopyrus]

I fell out of love with Phantom pretty much when I discovered other serious musicals but in the last few years I've come back around. I know to some extent I'm reading against the grain but it's SO FUNNY--the opera parody scenes are absolutely on the nose, and even Raoul and Christine's love story is fittingly earnest and shallow--they are the protagonists in a show about bad opera, after all! And the Phantom, who has spent his life fantasizing about how cool he'd be if only he could get girls to like him, writes an overwrought self-insert fantasy opera about Don Juan!

I agree with you about the superiority of the original cast album. Have you heard the Canadian cast recording with Colm Wilkinson and Rebecca Caine? Colm sounds like somebody's dad to me (he'll never NOT be Jean Valjean) but Caine's "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" is gorgeous.

[thistleingrey]

Right--I like Evita partly because it fits itself (and befits itself). Madonna does okay with acting (if not singing), but Banderas is the only character with significant screen time whose singing seems to match what he's given. I didn't know Jonathan Pryce's name[*] at all before the film, and afterwards I was shocked by how much he'd vanished into the role, such that Perón himself nearly vanishes, too much so.

* Then I looked him up and was shocked again to find that he'd been the original Engineer in Miss Saigon. Hurray for character actors, I guess.

[carmarthen]

Oh god, I have such WEIRD and COMPLICATED feelings about POTO. It was the most intense fandom of my teen years, and I was a total Erik/Christine shipper, and idek. A bunch of people in Miz fandom on Tumblr are all in the "...yeah, but Erik is actually super-creepy, what were we THINKING" boat. But I do love it, book and musical, in all the melodrama and ridiculousness, although these days my favorite characters are Meg and book!Carlotta and the Persian. I feel like it's a show that can be enormously fun on stage with the right cast, but which isn't so great from a purely soundtrack point of view, and which can flop hard with the wrong cast.

But for me, it's the OLC that hasn't aged well, mainly because I fell hard for Brad Little's interpretation of the Phantom and for baritone interpretations in general, and Michael Crawford's interpretation...does not do it for me personally anymore (although I agree there's creepiness there--but a lot of people seemed to miss that, which I think is where a lot of cuddly sweet Erik in fic came from, losing the psychotic violence inherent to the character). I don't think any full recordings exist of my favorite performers, though (I think the recording I listen to most at this point is the Third Japanese Cast).

I enjoyed the DVD of the 25th a lot, in part because it is a million times better than the fucking movie, but also because I love a lot of the physical acting choices. Just listening, I see what you mean about excessive emotion/melodrama, but watching it I thought there was some super-interesting body language stuff. (I also like Ramin Karimloo's Phantom a lot more than his Enjolras.)

[cahn]

My sister had known Pryce was the Engineer in Miss Saigon and was kind of shocked at exactly the same thing. Not having any familiarity with it before watching the movie, I thought Madonna and Banderas were great. (The friend who made me go watch it was horrified I thought Banderas was great, and forthwith made me listen to Mandy Patinkin -- and somehow I didn't know until really recently that it was the same guy whom I love on my Secret Garden recording -- who, I agree with her, has rather more of an emotional range than Banderas does in his singing. But I still liked Banderas a lot.)

[cahn]

Heeeee. Yeah, there's that about the opera scenes. Random cross-dressing and affairs with pageboys! I don't know any operas like that! :) The Don Juan opera is pretty amazing in its self-insert-ness.

I have not heard the Canadian cast recording, but that sounds great, I'll definitely look that up :)

[cahn]

THE PERSIAN! Oh, yeah, I loved that guy. I may have to read the book again just for that. And Meg, of course! I like Carlotta in the musical too-- that is, if there's a real singer playing her (*cough*that doesn't mean you, movie!) and she's allowed to, you know, be a good opera singer as well as a diva.

Hmm, that's very interesting to me that you don't think the OLC has aged well. Brad Little, huh. *makes notes* I... don't even understand how one can listen to Michael Crawford and not think it is the creepiest, and yes, like you say, psychotically violent, thing ever. The downside of that is that I once listened to a CD he made where he sang songs like "Bring Him Home," and I was all I CANNOT LISTEN TO THIS THIS IS JUST SO WRONG -- it was like I was expecting him to, I dunno, pop out at any minute and be all "Just kidding! Gonna cut his throat, actually! I hate that Marius dude!"

Oh, the MOVIE. Spotify coughed up one of the scenes from the movie to me today and it's SO BAAAAAD. Okay, I'll check out the DVD, that sounds very interesting. I do think it's a show that comes across much better on stage than on soundtrack, although the movie was also boring visually (I don't know how? But it somehow was anyway).

[carmarthen]

It's not really that I don't think the OLC has aged well, more that my tastes have shifted violently away from it because baritones *_*. But yeah, I think MC is pretty creepy, but a lot of phandom clearly didn't. And he largely inspired the existence of Susan Kay's Phantom, which I have Issues with.

I don't hate the movie as much as a lot of people, but it doesn't have much going for it, that's for sure. If you don't like Karimloo's vocal interp, though, idk if having the visuals will help or not.

[cahn]

Ah, I see. I'll have to listen to a baritone!Phantom -- I find tenor!Phantom sort of creepily compelling, but am willing to be convinced :) But also Steve Barton!! (I would love to have seen him playing the Phantom to see what he did with it.)

I... did not know about Susan Kay's Phantom. That is... disturbing. I might have to read it. I cannot look away!

I don't hate the movie, it's just boring and on the whole badly sung (Emmy Rossum wasn't terrible, and I remember Minnie Driver acting well, but on the soundtrack her voice is... no).

Oh, having the visuals always helps me -- the acting being good makes up for a LOT of deficiencies in voice. (Hi Hugh Jackman! :) )

[carmarthen]

Phantom is...woobifying. And has a Gypsy villain named Javert, which makes me cranky.

I mean, if you don't like melodrama, you might find the physical acting falls into the same range? I'm not sure. I've actually only watched it once, and was overwhelmed with NOT THE MOVIE THANK GOD.

[cahn]

I don't like melodrama in singing, but I'm way more forgiving of it in physical acting, especially on the stage where everything kind of has to be big gestures. And, ha, the fact that it is not the movie can only help :)

[thistleingrey]

I do think Banderas did a pretty good job--and Patinkin sometimes phones things in; I liked the one season of Dead Like Me (which is also the last US tv show I watched regularly, or kind of at all, heh) but wasn't impressed by him there. Anyway!

[(Anonymous)]

Hello I should tell you that on Hadley Fraser's official site this is how he sums up both roles:

LES MISERABLES 25th ANNIVERSARY. Hadley plays a drunk and strokes Ramin Karimloo's face. What more could you want from the world's most popular musical...?

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA 25th ANNIVERSARY. Hadley plays a man who ends up as a drunk (in the sequel) and strokes Sierra Boggess' face. What more could you want from the world's most popular musical...? Wait a second...

JUST IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING IF THAT WAS *UNINTENTIONAL* SUBTEXT....