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Analysis of Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera
Analysis of Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera
Analysis of Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera
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Andrew Lloyd Webber is regarded as one of the most popular names in musical theatre history, as he has a wide variety of famous shows under his name and with any truly, great name comes a humble background. Webber was born in London, England, in 1948, to William and Jean Webber, two very talented musicians themselves. Andrew’s younger brother Julian is also a well-known composer, but it was their father that Andrew was inspired by. Webber started to play every instrument his parents could teach him and by the age of nine he was performing beside William in his very own concerts which is when he began writing his own music he could conduct. “My father could easily have taken other directions as a composer, had he wanted. He was well versed in …show more content…
The Phantom of the Opera rapidly became “the highest grossing staged musical in the entire world, with over 80 million audience members producing a profit of 3.3 billion dollars.” (Shelokhonov, 2017). It has run longer than any other Broadway musical, with multiple revivals and recorded performances, as well as the 2004 movie and even a musical sequel, Love Never Dies, composed by, of course, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. “For some, Phantom forged a path for a new kind of populist opera that could survive and thrive without government subsidy, while less sympathetic critics heard Phantom ’s ‘puerile’ operatics as sophomoric jibes against an art form they esteemed” (Winkler, 2014. p. 1). The musical is considered a cult classic and a favorite amongst theatre goers. Webber did also win an Oscar in “Best Music” for Evita, the film version, and he was also nominated in the same category for both film adaptations of Jesus Christ Superstar and The Phantom of the Opera. He has also won four Tony Awards for Best Musical: Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, and Sunset Boulevard as well as three separate Tony’s for Best Original Score: Evita, Cats, and Sunset Boulevard (Shelokhonov,
People have dreams of what they want to do or accomplish in life, but usually musical theatre is just pushed into the non-realistic void. It isn’t a dream for me. In the past four years, musical theatre has been clarified as my reality. Musical theatre has been the only thing I have seen myself wanting to do. My first love was The Phantom of the Opera, seeing how I watched it almost every day and it was one of the first shows I saw. Of course, I started doing all of those cute shows in middle school and making a huge deal about it to my family and friends, but I have never felt so passionate about something. The minute I get up on that stage I throw away Riley for two and a half hours and it’s the most amazing feeling! Being able to tell a story
The son of Jewish immigrants and the youngest of five children, Aaron, grew up above his parent’s successful Brooklyn, New York department store. He credited his business abilities to his experience helping to run his parents store. His sister, Laurine, introduced young Aaron to ragtime, opera and was his first piano teacher. At the age of seven, he was making up tunes at the piano and was notating short pieces at twelve years old. Aaron’s first formal piano lessons were under the instruction of Leopold Wolfsohn (1913-17) and later he studied under Victor Wittgenstein (1917-19) and Clarence Adler (1919-21) (Pollack, 1:Life). However, lessons in composition and music theory were under the tutelage of Rubin Goldmark, “an old-fashioned teacher...against whom Copland rebelled” (naxos.com). During this time, Aaron was enamored with Scriabin, Debussy and Ives (which Goldmark called “dangerous”) and he scoured New York’s public libraries for the latest American and European scores. Finally, Aaron’s dream of studying in Paris came to fruition (1921-4) taking piano instruction from Ricardo Vines and studying composi...
Franz began to compose at the age of eight. When only nine he made his first public appearance as a concert pianist. His playing so impressed the local Hungarian magnates that they put up the money to pay for his musical education for the next six years. Liszt’s father obtained leave of absence from his post and took Franz to Vienna. He gave several concerts in Vienna, with great success.
Christine Daae has a deep connection with the “Angel of Music’. As her father told her stories of this angel when she was little, her favorite story was of Lotte a little girl who was visited by the angel and had a beautiful voice. Christine tells Raoul that she is going to visit her father’s grave. They see a violin performance by an invisible person, which she believes is the Angel of Music or angel of her father.
Coming from a musical background Terrence Mann most definitely lives up to his parents’ talent. He has formed a successful carreer around his talents. His career includes multiple appearances on Broadway, appearances in movies, and being a distinguished professor of musical theatre at Western Carolina. Today he passes on his passion for young people who hope to one day become as successful and well know as Terrence Mann.
Countless dozens of Ph.D theses must be written about Mozart's The Magic Flute and yet it is so lively with elements of fantasy and free-flying imagination that it is often the first opera to which children are taken. It has a plot of such complexity that it takes several viewings for all but the most studious opera buffs to sort out the characters and follow the ins and outs of the multilevel story. At the same time it has so much easily accessible charm and so many glorious Mozart tunes that even the novice will be captivated.
Miller went through college with many failed and unpublished plays. Still, he never gave up hope. Finally he hit one success which kept him on the Broadway stage for several decades to come. Arthur Miller is a New York born American playwright who developed a reputation by dealing with political and moral issues through his plays. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg with it comes to the story of Arthur Miller.
Hugh Laurie was raised in England with his three siblings. As a young boy around age seven, Hugh Laurie began learning how to play piano from a teacher, Mrs. Hare, whom he did not favor because of her style of teaching him how to play. Hugh Laurie had his first encounter when he was ten, when he was listening to his family's car radio(Green 3). Laurie was captivated by the notes of this music, and it was instantly his favorite genre (Karlovits 2). Even after he had this encounter, with the blues, he did not desire a musical career yet. Instead, he started his working life with a comedy TV show on BBC with his friend Stephen Fry. This show, which was called "A Bit of Fry and Laurie", brought Hugh Laurie fame throughout the United Kingdom. However, this success would not last for long. Later, when Hugh Laurie began his acting career with the performance "Botham: The Musical." The audience did not like the play, and Hugh Laurie was doubtful about recovering from this downfall as an actor. As most people know though, he d...
The musical Hamilton, by Lin-Manuel Miranda tells of Alexander Hamilton’s impressive journey from an all but irrelevant street child, to one of the most important men in American politics. It is based off of a true story of growth, heroism, and determination. In writing this musical, Miranda takes a dry, historic story, and turns it into a captivating performance. His project to take the story of Alexander Hamilton and make it relatable to the average American is extraordinarily successful, mostly because the methods by which he does this are unprecedented. His unique methods and practices have resulted in Hamilton being so popular that it was awarded a record breaking sixteen Tony nominations (Paulson). The musical tells how Hamilton doesn’t
Richard Wagner and Opera One of the key figures in the history of opera, Wagner was largely responsible for altering its orientation in the nineteenth century. His program of artistic reform accelerated the trend towards organically conceived, through-composed structures, as well as influencing the development of the orchestra, of a new breed of singer, and of various aspects of theatrical practice. As the most influential composer during the second half of the nineteenth century, Richard Wagner's conception of music remains very much with us even a century after his death. He was a remarkable innovator both in harmony and the structure of his work, creating his own version of the holistic kunstwerk, dramatic compositions in which the arts were brought together in a single unity. In the later part of his career Wagner enjoyed the support of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and was finally able to establish his own theatre and festival at the Bavarian town of Bayreuth.
Igor Stravinsky was born near St. Petersburg, Russia into a very musical family. His father was famous for being an operatic bass and his mother was a pianist. Their home was filled with art, literature, and music, and Igor started piano lessons at age nine. But his parents didn’t want him to follow in their footsteps, so they encouraged him to study law, which he did. He went to a university to study, and it was there that he befriended Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov, a celebrated composer, who Stravinsky was apprenticed under for three years. After a year and a half of this excellent music instruction, Stravinsky began his first symphony. It was around this time that he graduated from the university and married his cousin, Catherine Nossenko. When he and his wife went to the country that summer, Stravinsky promised Rimsky-Korsakov, his good friend as well as mentor, that he’d send him the finished music of the piece he was working on. A few weeks later, he sent the completed composition, his well-known Firworks, to him. But the parcel was returned with a message: “Not delivered owing to the death of the addressee”. This was a sad time for Stravinsky, but it was also one full of promise, because before his death Rimsky-Korsakov arranged for some of Stravinsky’s music to be performed. In the audience of one of these performances was Sergei Diaghilev, a dire...
Like many famous composers from the time, Franz was raised as a child prodigy. His father who was an amateur composer taught him at first. When he was nine, he appeared in several concerts, which in wealthy people would often want to sponsor Franz. Even though he went to these concerts, he had been composing dance he was only eight years old, and he had been playing the piano since he was seven!
This book discusses the life of Glenn Gould who was a profound pianist known for his classical music, Peter Ostwald a late violinist who wrote “The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius of Glenn Gould” believed that Gould was extraordinary gifted and that his music gained much appreciation among the people in the community. He not only saw Gould as a genius but also as a companion who struggled to find peace in his life through the sound of music. Gould didn’t act like a normal child he isolated himself from others because he felt that others around him did not share the same passion for music. His father noticed when he was born that instead of crying, “Glenn always hum” (Ostwald, 1997). This showed that Glenn was born with a passion towards music from the very early stages of life. Gould formed behaviors of an ambivalent attachment style towards his mother and behaviors of a secure attachment towards his father this impacted his ability to form long lasting relationships with people during his childhood progressing into his adult years. (My thesis)
The Lion King musical is a well-known musical that has taken the stages of Broadway, West End and the rest of the world by storm (The Lion King, 1997). Regarding the process of the musical, Artistic Director Julie Taymor’s first thoughts for choosing the Lion King as the next big thing on stage, was classed as ‘impossible’ due to the film’s lack of theatrical material (The Lion King, 1997). Therefore, staging this particular work contained a great deal of uncertainty and the need for taking huge risks. Taymor (1997) suggests how ‘the Lion King was the worst idea possible to create a stage show.’ It has become evident that a number of significant barriers had to be overcome to secure the practicality of the production. In view of this controversy, this dissertation will critically analyse the success of the Lion King by exploring two significant aspects that have helped to make the musical a success. Firstly, the essential components that make up this theatrical production will be explored and secondly, the roles of each producer within the Lion King and their combined and individual influences they have had from the production will be evaluated. By analysing these two central themes, this paper will show how and why this musical has developed and achieved its phenomenal success.
The Phantom of the Opera directed by Joel Schumacher is the 2004 adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical of the same name. The Phantom of the Opera stars Gerard Butler as the Phantom, Emmy Rossum as Christine Daaé, and Patrick Wilson as Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny, who are embroiled in a love triangle. The film was met with generally mixed and negative reviews: Schumacher’s use of mise-en-scène, cinematography and editing, as well as symbolism contributes to the production of The Phantom of the Opera.