And that’s how beautiful he is on the inside,” Yeston said. He’s been surrounded by musical beauty from the moment he was born. “As misshapen or as unattractive as he is on the outside, he’s been raised with nothing but the most beautiful music in the world - gorgeous soprano voices wafting down through the bottom of the stage all the way down to the crypt. We learn that he loves William Blake’s poetry and that he even has a sense of humor, at one point insulting diva Carlotta’s voice by saying it’s “worse than my face.” We quickly learn the Phantom’s name - Erik. We learn who his parents are and how he had a loving mother who didn’t recoil at the sight of his deformed face. Unlike Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera,” Yeston’s Phantom that lurks in the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera House isn’t so mysterious. “The Phantom is a classic bad guy,” Yeston said. Which is why Yeston believes his take on “The Phantom of the Opera” continues to be a story worth telling. But recent trends in the entertainment industry are suggesting that the misunderstood villain is even more popular. In 2017, “ Wicked” jumped ahead of “The Phantom of the Opera” as Broadway’s second-highest grossing musical, trailing only behind “The Lion King.” The Tony Award-winning musical has been on Broadway since 2003 and surpassed $1 billion in Broadway revenue in 2016. 1 box office spot during its opening weekend.Īnd then on Broadway, there’s “Wicked” - the popular musical that shows us that Elphaba, aka the Wicked Witch of the West, really isn’t so wicked after all. Although “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” didn’t fare well at the box office, it did knock “Joker” out of the No. In North America, “Joker” brought in $96 million during opening weekend, making it the highest-grossing opening in October history, CNN reported. Understanding the Phantomįrom “Joker” to the “Maleficent” franchise, the backstories of our classic villains are a predominant theme in Hollywood right now. In fact, Yeston believes “Phantom” has the potential to be more popular than ever as it capitalizes on a storyline that has seen a recent surge in the entertainment industry: Seeing our villains in a different light. Yeston, who turned 74 on Wednesday, still believes that. “It was the greatest hit never to be produced on Broadway,” he told The New York Times in 2003. That’s a far cry from “Phantom of the Opera’s” 13,000 performances on Broadway, but Yeston is proud of the life it’s had. It’s had more than 1,000 productions around the world - including a current run at the Hale Centre Theatre in Sandy, Utah. It got a two-part miniseries on NBC in 1990, followed by a theatrical debut in 1991.
But when Kopit saw “Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway - to this day, Yeston hasn’t seen Webber’s production - he knew their take on the Phantom was fundamentally different. Yeston started working on other projects - a piece for renowned tenor Placido Domingo, and the musical “Titanic,” among others. “(We thought), ‘If Andrew’s going to do that show … we’ll just move on,’” Yeston recently told the Deseret News from his New York home.Īs Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” began to thrive on Broadway, Yeston’s “Phantom” collected dust on a shelf. Yeston knew better than to compete with the guy who had given the world “Cats.” And then an article in Variety brought them to a screeching halt: Andrew Lloyd Webber was going to do his own adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s novel, “Phantom of the Opera.” By the mid-1980s, Tony Award-winning composer Maury Yeston had written the music for “Phantom.” He and his writing partner, Arthur Kopit, had secured Broadway investors. Which is why the other story about the Phantom, the one that digs deeper into the mysterious character’s past, didn’t stand a chance - at least on Broadway.īut that story had a head start. SANDY - It was a race to Broadway, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” won.įor 31 years, Broadway’s longest-running show has had an uncontested run in the Majestic Theatre, winning seven Tony Awards, playing to 18.5 million people and grossing more than $1.1 billion.