Andrew Lloyd Webber, legendary musical composer, received a standing ovation at New York’s Majestic Theater on Sunday. However, the reception was also a farewell, because after 35 years Webber’s musical “Phantom of the Opera” celebrated its last performance on New York’s Broadway on Sunday.
The closures during the corona pandemic also caused a sharp drop in sales for the successful show. When the theaters reopened, the world-famous musical could no longer match the previous number of visitors. Although the running time was extended by a few months due to high demand after the announcement of the closure in February, the famous chandelier finally fell on the stage of New York’s Majestic Theater for the last time on Sunday – one of the most spectacular scenes of the show.
In 2006, the show broke the record for the longest-running Broadway production – despite the mixed reviews from the start. The piece was repeatedly said to be pure spectacle without much substance. After almost 14,000 performances, almost 20 million locals and tourists have been whisked away to the catacombs of the opera on Broadway alone since 1988 to experience the story of the young opera singer Christine Daaé, her lover Raoul and the masked phantom. Ticket sales are said to have brought the show $1.3 billion in revenue. 6,500 people are said to have worked on the show over the years, 450 of them as performers on stage. Musicians who had already accompanied the premiere musically were sitting in the orchestra pit yesterday, Sunday.
To say goodbye to his great success on the big Broadway stage, Andrew Lloyd Webber was not alone on stage after the last curtain fell. In addition to the current cast, the premiere cast also received the cheering of the fans who wanted to say goodbye to the “Phantom” in retirement. The Majestic Theater is now to be renovated. Lloyd Webber himself doesn’t seem to rule out a return of the Phantom to Broadway.
