Phantom Of The Opera Essay

The Phantom of the Opera and the Ghost of Paris’ History

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera takes the audience though the Paris Opera house in the late 19th century and it is this journey that I experienced on the night of March 20, 2016. We sat down in the theater of Nashville, Tennessee’s Andrew Jackson Hall within the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. An object draped in canvas with the inscription “Lot 666” hangs overhead. As the lights dim and the musical opens with the scene of the dilapidated opera house, years after the events of the musical. Attention is quickly drawn to the overhanging object. As the music begins to swell, all eyes are trained overhead as the canvas is stripped away revealing the grand chandelier while the

After the opening sequence, the musical moves to the stage of the theater, which displays a mixture of opera and ballet performance. With the entry of Christine Daae, the musical soon moves to the phantom’s lair as he lures her in with hauntingly beautiful music. They cross a lake underneath the opera house to reach the phantom’s watery domain. The trip across the lake is simulated on stage with smoke and a rolling boat as the title song is sung. After discovering her “angel of music’s” disfigurement, she retreats back to the opera house above and back to the arms of Raoul, the rival for her love. The musical ends back in the cellars of the opera house as the “phantom” confesses his love for Christine while threatening Raoul’s life. In the end, the “phantom” allows them both to leave, an action that cements his character as a love-starved and tragic character that has charmed hearts for decades. With beautiful music, amazing voices and well-crafted story, The Phantom of the Opera takes viewers back to the time of Paris’ modernization and gives the audience a sense of what the new upper-class of Paris did for entertainment in the late 19th