NEW YORK, NY.- Andrew Lloyd Webber looked pleased.
He was standing over the large orchestra pit of his musical The Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theater on Broadway, hearing the instrumental EntrActe from the top after a half-hour of detail work more emphatic delivery here, more passionate lyricism there. He held his hands at his hips, a contented smile on his face.
Thats great, much better, he said after the ensemble finished. It just needs to be played like its on the edge, all the time.
Lloyd Webber, composer of some of the most famous musicals of the past five decades in a wide stylistic range from the radio-ready rock of Jesus Christ Superstar to the maddening tunefulness of Cats and the lush romanticism of Phantom was in town from Britain to prepare for the reopening on Friday of the longest-running show in Broadway history.
Visits from composers are rarely afforded to musicals as settled in as Phantom, which opened at the Majestic in 1988. But because the pandemic kept it shuttered for over a year and a half, its return is more like a revival; the productions tech has been spruced up during the pause, and the cast and orchestra were rehearsing the material as if it were new.
And thats exactly how Lloyd Webber wanted it to sound, he told the musicians during rehearsal Thursday, by way of some personal history.
I remember when I was a boy I managed to get a ticket to the Zeffirelli production of Tosca at the Royal Opera House, Lloyd Webber said, recalling how he had always heard that Puccinis melodrama was a potboiler not worth the price of admission. Yet Franco Zeffirelli, the Italian director with an extravagantly cinematic sensibility, decided that he would shake up the cobwebs.
What I just remember is, Tito Gobbi and Maria Callas that night, in the second act, made an impression on me that Ill never forget, he continued. It was just extraordinary, because the critics were saying, Oh, my gosh, this is actually the greatest score. Im not trying to say this is the same thing, but its just that we have to approach everything now as if its the very, very, very first time.
Phantom may not be Puccini, but its score thick and lavishly orchestrated shares more with opera than most Broadway musicals. It calls for an unusually large ensemble of nearly 30 players, about one-third of whom have been with the show since 1988. Today I dont think we would be able to do that, Lloyd Webber said during an interview between rehearsals. I think everybodys forgotten what a real orchestra can sound like.
Given that size, Lloyd Webber was particular about amplification Thursday, preferring to let the instruments sound as acoustic as possible. But the orchestra needed to give more to make it work; virtually all of his notes to the conductor, the associate musical supervisor Kristen Blodgette, were about adding emphasis to a score that is already brazenly emphatic.
You can make a little more of that phrase, he said at one point; at others: We want the audience in our grip, Its just a little undernourished and I think that can really come up a bit, I would treat it as appassionata.
He was joined by David Caddick, the production musical supervisor, who wanted for more of the same, asking the strings to play into the shape of the melody during a section of the EntrActe based on the soaring duet All I Ask of You, and reminding them to make every melody sing out.
When some of the cast later came onstage to rehearse the operatic set piece Prima Donna and All I Ask of You Lloyd Webber at times seemed to be channeling Hal Prince, the shows legendary director, who died in 2019, guiding the singers in their understanding and delivery of lyrics on a level as small as single words. Im one of the only ones left who was here on the ground floor, Lloyd Webber later said. (The choreographer, Gillian Lynne, died in 2018.) But I was very close to Hal on this.
In the scene leading up to Prima Donna, for example, he welcomed more joy and comedy. He told Craig Bennett, who plays Monsieur Firmin: Its great fun if you can say To hell with Gluck and Handel, have a scandal its the inner rhyme, isnt it? Thats the game, savoring every moment because there are some good lines there.
And to Meghan Picerno and John Riddle, the shows current Christine and Raoul, he said while running through All I Ask of You: I think that what were perhaps not getting is that theyre like teenagers in love. It needs to be more earnest. Say One love, one lifetime as if you really mean it. Just run with it. The more of that there is here, the more of an antidote it will be to what comes in the second act.
Again, this is uncommon; such attention from a composer is more likely to be given to a new show, such as Lloyd Webbers latest, Cinderella, which opened in London this summer after a series of pandemic delays. During that time and throughout the shutdown he was one of theaters fiercest and most outspokenly frustrated advocates. And when Cinderella at last debuted in the West End, its opening night was also a milestone for being that musicals first performance for a full-capacity audience.
Its an ordeal that could make for a chapter of the awaited sequel to his memoir, Unmasked, which follows his life and work only until Phantom. Oh, Im not writing that, he said in the interview between rehearsals, adding with a puckish grin: Theres too much I know. Id rather write another show, and get Cinderella here.
But first, he had Phantom to open the next day. And a rehearsal to return to. As he stood up from a lobby chair to walk back into the house, he said, I do always love to hear it.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.