The Phantom of the Opera
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The musical opened at Her Majesty's Theatre on 9 October 1986 with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman in the leading roles and there have been sixteen productions world-wide since then.
The Phantom of the Opera is the jewel in the crown of The Really Useful Group's copyrights. It is estimated that over 80 million people have seen the show and the box office gross world-wide stands at nearly USD$3.2 Billion. Awards include the Laurence Olivier and Evening Standard Award for Best Musical and seven Tony Awards.
Aside from the West End production, The Phantom of the Opera is currently playing in New York, Sao Paulo, Essen, Tokyo and Budapest, a production is touring the USA and a new USD 35 million production specially developed for Las Vegas, opened in the Venetian, Las Vegas in June this year.
Joel Schumacher directed a big screen version of The Phantom of the Opera which was released worldwide at the end of 2004. It starred Gerard Butler as The Phantom, Emmy Rossum as Christine, Patrick Wilson as Raoul and Minnie Driver as Carlotta.
The Phantom has played more than 65,000 performances in 20 countries in 110 cities around the world to over 80 million people.
The Phantom celebrated its 7000th performance at The Majestic Theatre in New York on 10 November 2004. On 9th October 2006, it is due to celebrate its 20th birthday on the West End.
It has won over 50 major theatre awards including 3 Olivier Awards, the most recent being the 2002 Oliver Audience Award for Most Popular Show, an Evening Standard Award, 7 Tony Awards including Best Musical, 7 Drama Desk Awards and 3 Outer Critic Circle Awards.
The original cast recording was the first in British musical history to enter the charts at number one. Since then it has gone gold and platinum in the UK and US, selling over 40 million copies worldwide. It is the biggest selling cast album of all time.
The New York production became the longest running show ever on Broadway when it overtook CATS with its 7,486th performance on January 6th 2006.
- The dazzling replica of the Paris Opera House chandelier is made up of 6,000 beads consisting of 35 beads to each string. It is 3 metres wide and weighs one ton. The touring version falls at 2.5 metres per second. The original version was built by 5 people in 4 weeks.
- The Phantom's make-up takes 2 hours to put on and 30 minutes to take off. The face is moisturized, closely shaved and the prosthetics are fitted, setting immediately, before 2 wigs, 2 radio mics and 2 contact lenses (one white and one clouded) are placed.
- 2,230 metres of fabric are used for the drapes, 900 of them specially dyed. The tasselled fringes measure 226 metres. They are made up of 250 kilos of dyed wool interwoven with 5,000 wooden beads imported from India. Each one is handmade and combed through with an Afro comb.
- There are 130 cast, crew and orchestra members directly involved in each performance.
- Each performance has 230 costumes, 14 dressers, 120 automated cues, 22 scene changes, 281 candles and uses 250 kg of dry ice and 10 fog and smoke machines.
- The touring production takes 27 articulated lorries to transfer the set between theatres