A Musical Dream Come True

So last month an old friend from high school, Keith, took me on a bus trip to New York City for the day to surprise me with a show on Broadway.  The only other time I've had that pleasure I was still in high school and it was a class trip with the gifted program to see Les Miserables, so I was extremely excited. The surprise aspect was that I knew I was going to see something but didn't know what until we we turned the corner onto the street the theater was on.



You see, back in high school Keith had gotten me addicted to musical theater by way of Phantom of the Opera. Since then it has been a passion of mine. I've read the novel by Gaston Leroux multiple times, own VHS tapes and DVDs of the various movie incarnations, have a Christmas ornament and snowglobe based on it, and even the perfume (a gift from another friend in high school).

It's hard to see but the cap looks like a rose in bloom.

Keith and I dreamed of the day we would be able to go and see it live on Broadway at the Majestic Theater.  We knew exactly what rows to sit in if we wanted the chandelier to come crashing down right over our heads.  You would often find the two of us sitting at the piano in my dining room, him playing and the two of us singing as best we could the various songs we had the sheet music for. We've both been out of high school for over a decade now and don't get to see each other often, but those memories are some of my fondest from that time. So when we turned the corner and I saw the marquee of the Majestic it was a dream come true.

I was smiling so big I thought the top of my head would fall off!

 I have spent hours uncounted listening to the Original London Cast Recording and thought that I was prepared, I was wrong. So delightfully wrong! To quote the Phantom during The Music of the Night "Softly, deftly music shall caress you". The way the music rolls up and over you from the orchestra pit is more than just sound; you can literally feel it surround you and carry you away in its grasp to the world of the Paris Opera house in the nineteenth century. The technique of bouncing the Phantom's voice around the room during the Notes sequences is something I never would have imagined from just listening to the recording and added that additional supernatural feel to the whole thing.

The Opera House in ruins at the start of the show.

 When you walk in the stage is set to be the Opera House in shambles years after the events of the story.  The covered shape at center stage is "the chandelier which figures in the famous...disaster" and not a piece of it shows from underneath making the reveal at the start of the Overture that much more impressive.

The dome of the theater.

Directly above our seats, strategically chosen so that the chandelier would crash over us of course, was the dome of the theater. The detail in every aspect of the building is phenomenal and reflects the grandeur of the time in which the musical is set.

The Chandelier in its glory.

 At the end of the first Act the chandelier drops from the ceiling and swings back down to the stage. I knew this was coming but was unprepared for exactly how long it drops straight down over your head before swinging to the stage. The change of trajectory hits right about the moment the voice in the back of your head starts whispering that the mechanism has failed and you are about to be squished.

Aside from the beauty of the theater itself and the fabulous music there is so much to see through out the show that I'm sure those who go back time and again find something new to appreciate each time. The clever insertion of the mundane happenings backstage at the Opera sets off the otherworldly nature of the events surrounding Christine, Raoul and the Phantom and heightens the dramatic nature of their actions. Something as simple as having Madame Giry putting the ballerinas through their forms while Christine and Raoul reunite in her dressing room brings life to the setting showing that these events aren't happening in a vacuum.

All in all it was an amazing experience that I doubt I will ever be fully able to articulate. On the bus ride home tears of joy kept rolling down my face at what I had just experienced. Hopefully some day I'll be able to go back and see it again.

"And may its splendor never fade!"