CMU School of Drama


Monday, March 28, 2022

The Phantom of the Opera (Opera Australia's Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour)

limelightmagazine.com.au: The Phantom of the Opera had its world premiere in London’s West End in 1986. Since then it has been seen by over 140 million people worldwide, becoming one of the longest-running, most popular shows in musical theatre history.

1 comment:

Iris Chiu said...

I adore the Phantom of the Opera; it is easily one of my favorite musicals of all time, so of course upon seeing any article mentioning this iconic show, I have to read it. Opera Australia having this show be a full scale outdoor performance for the first time in Phantom history is really impressive; the technical elements described in the article all seemed extraordinary. Being outdoors as opposed to the insides of the traditional theatre space opens up a lot of new opportunities for creative technicalities; and with this outdoor production of Phantom, things like pyrotechnics and mechanical cranes are able to be used to elevate the intensity of the performance in never-before-seen ways. The article mentions towards the end that there are some unpredictable issues with the outdoors being the stage, such as the weather. I did see a clip of one of these shows earlier this week that showed an unfortunate downpour of rain during the “Don Juan Triumphant” scene; the actors kept their composure extraordinarily well, there was surprisingly no apparent issue with the microphones or sound output, and it made for a very cool visual effect!