The Music of Another Night

Last night I watched the 25th Anniversary Royal Albert Hall production of The Phantom of the Opera, recorded in 2011. I watched part of it in 2012 and stopped because I thought Ramin Karimloo wasn't as good as Michael Crawford. I stuck it out this time and Karimloo grew on me. His Phantom seems a bit more unstable than Crawford, he seems more often on the verge of mental and emotional collapse, which I sometimes really liked. Though I still feel Crawford's singing was more complex. Sierra Boggess as Christine wisely holds nothing back in the graveyard scene and gives the character's psychological issues a great deal of weight. She helps prevent the character from feeling like a blank romance novel protagonist, like the girl in Twilight.

The suitor selection, Raoul and the Phantom, makes this a good fantasy for heterosexual women to enjoy. And I think the influences of postmodernist literature that recontextualises villains, like Grendel and Interview with the Vampire, lead it down a path to the Byronic hero and Milton's Satan. The writers must have been thinking of Milton when the Phantom finally refers to himself as an angel of Hell.

The costumes in the 25th anniversary edition are great. I particularly love Christine's costume during the Don Juan Triumphant scene (an obvious nod to Lord Byron).

It occurs to me that Frozen is the Phantom of the 2010s.

A friend from work let me borrow a DVD of the 25th anniversary production. There's currently a production going on here in Japan. It makes sense that the musical is popular here given the fact that it deals with a contrast between public and private life, between the glory of creating beautiful artifice and the bitterness of reality's limitations.

It's a lovely show in any country, though.

Twitter Sonnet #1666

A barrel bod rebuffed the spinning rag.
A waxy car ignites the candle heart.
With turtle tools we took the easy bag.
But now the mountain melts beneath the cart.
A song of trains rejected sense for thought.
Demurring lemurs love the best of times.
So cram the leafy spinach down the pot.
A normal rocket charts as Buster climbs.
The racing forties finished many days.
Again, the rodent climbed prediction's tree.
A shadow cast results in sleepy ways.
The queen demands a lighter, faster bee.
Disaster minds the stage for ghosts at night.
A grinning skull arose above the quiet fight.