I DECIDED to let the pandemonium quieten down and the grumbling of some die-hard "phans" (Phantom of the Opera fans) to cease, before I reviewed the soundtrack to Andrew Lloyd Webber's anxiously awaited sequel to his 1986 hit The Phantom of the Opera (POTO).
I will state upfront that POTO is my favourite of all West-End musicals and its opening — on my tenth birthday in 1986 — also ignited an enduring love affair (strictly musical of course) with popera diva Sarah Brightman.
So, when Lloyd Webber, 62, announced, in the earlier part of the decade, plans to follow up his gothic — if not autobiographic — masterpiece, I was intrigued to see how, or if, he could better the original.
After several years of rewrites, reworks and redos (allegedly Lloyd Webber's cat erased his music notation computer in 2007), Love Never Dies — The Phantom II, opened on Mar 9 in London.
Soundtrack from Love Never Dies musical. PHOTO: Supplied
Not able to see the show's premiere, I pre-ordered the digital version of the soundtrack and had gone through several "plays" before the curtain had even gone up at the Adelphi Theatre.
Firstly, without giving too much away, the story picks up 10 years after the Phantom escaped the Parisian hoards and moved from his subterranean lair beneath the Opera House to the weird and wonderful Coney Island in New York City.
There, the Phantom has taken on the moniker of Mr Y (I've yet to find out why) and with the help of returning characters Madame Giry and her daughter Meg (who has become a vaudeville singer), he's built a freak show empire.
But the Phantom continues to pine for Christine, and finally lures the now married soprano to sing for him in the Big Apple. It's not all roses and symphonies though, and Christine's ten-year-old son throws a spanner in the musical works.
Will she sing again, will the music of the night again start to soarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr? That's the underlying theme of Love Never Dies.
And after a dozen or so listens I can hear that Lloyd Webber has worked hard to pull this show off. But unfortunately, it falls short of equalling its predecessor — however, I hasten to add, this is not due to the music.
Love Never Dies features some of the best, freshest and most emotional music Lloyd Webber has composed since 1993's Sunset Boulevard.
Right from the get-go, with the Coney Island Waltz, we are transported back to a time of everyday fantasy and the elaborate mystique of the pier-side fairground — once described as the eighth wonder of the world.
Soaring strings give way to manic brass and percussion that take on the momentum of a runaway roller coaster, a musical interpretation of the events set to come.
Lloyd Webber's knack for orchestrating grand sweeping scores becomes apparent a few tracks later with The Ayrie. From the first bars you feel Erik's (the Phantom's actual given name) despair as he ponders his life filled with "smoke and noise" in the US and the years past since he last heard Christine's angelic voice.
The instrumental also provides a bridge to the show's first big ballad, Till I Hear You Sing, performed with great gusto by 31-year-old Iranian-born Canadian actor Ramin Karimloo, who played the Phantom for two years at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. The heart-wrenching song is gritty and impassioned and harks back to the Phantom's unbridled and, at times, malevolent love for his songstress, in the original story. But the years have mellowed him somewhat and manic adoration has given way to more poignant angst.
Lloyd Webber has been responsible for some of the most enduring pop songs to come out of musical theatre in the past 30 years. There is Any Dream Will Do, Jesus Christ Superstar and No Matter What — made famous by Boyzone — but my favourite remains The Phantom of the Opera, sung originally by Sarah Brightman and Steve Harley (whose mask was taken away when Michael Crawford came on board).
Love Never Dies has its own rock/pop standard in the form of The Beauty Underneath sung by Karimloo and Harry Child, 13, playing Gustave, Christine's son. Again, Lloyd Webber has nailed the mix between gyrating rock and theatrics, with electric guitar, blaring brass and racing strings working into a frenzy as the Phantom waxes lyrical over pleasures dark and mysterious. And although the scream at the end is a desperate link to Brightman's famous shreak — the song, overall, works.
Sadly, it's in the second act that things start to go awry — mainly due to the predictable plot. There are some intriguing moments when there are snatches of music and words taken from POTO — a shrewd move on Lloyd Webber's part. And the duet, Devil Take The Hindmost, between a warring Phantom and Raoul (Joseph Millson), shows off some masculine musical bravado.
In the latter half, the show's namesake, Love Never Dies, sung by a love torn Christine — played elegantly by American soprano Sierra Boggess, 27 — is given its premiere.
Interestingly, the ballad has in fact had two previous births; it first premiered at Lloyd Webber's 50th birthday celebration in 1998, sung by New Zealander Kiri Te Kanawa and titled The Heart Is Slow To Learn. It then got rehashed, two years later, for cricket musical The Beautiful Game. In the third incarnation the haunting melody remains but the new lyrics really don't pull at the heartstrings as Te Kanawa's original version did.
And that's the main irk. The show's lyrics, as they currently stand, is what keeps Love Never Dies from truly soaring. To put it bluntly, many of the words are quite naf and do not do the music justice.
POTO had lyrics by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe. They were deep, poetic, funny, multi-layered and poignant, and yet not so complex as to make them unmemorable.
The sequel, however, is penned by American lyricist Glenn Slater (The Little Mermaid) who seems content on using at times tacky word-play and easy rhyme to get through his bosses' sweeping orchestrations. An example is the duet Beneath A Moonless Sky, sung when Christine realises the true identity of Mr Y and both reminisce about one night in their distant past — whilst in the throws of passion:
Christine: "And I touched you"
Phantom: "And I felt you"
Together: "And I heard those ravishing refrains"
Christine: "The music of your pulse" (?)
Phantom: "The singing in your veins" (?!)
or, in Act I's closing...
Christine: "Tomorrow night, I'll sing with all my might"
Luckily the sweeping melody and chemistry between Boggess and Karimloo makes up for some of the jarring prose.
Like a film's soundtrack, musical lyrics only work when they're not apparent, when it just seems like the characters are speaking, albeit in song — that's its mastery and art.
In POTO, even words spoken in whispered soliloquies carried great emotional weight. Slater's words meld better in the more upbeat tunes, like The Beauty Underneath and quartet My Dear Old Friend or the vaudeville shenanigans of Meg Giry (Summer Strallen) and her troupe in Bathing Beauty. Expressing "ravish refrains", comes out cheesy, which is the last thing you'd expect from this lovelorn fairytale.
Of course it takes two hands to conduct and it's not like Lloyd Webber left Slater to his own devices (at least I hope not). But somehow, this crucial element seems to have escaped, or not bothered the composer — his casting of Gerard Butler as the lead in the movie version of POTO also continues to baffle me.
And when these lyrical issues are mixed with a plot that has not held up well in critics' show reviews (some disgruntled "phans" have actually retitled it Paint Never Dries), it weakens the foundations of a potentially magical musical sequel.
Personally, I feel Hart and Stilgoe should have been a mandatory requirement for this production.
But the joy of theatre, unlike cinema, is that it's always a work in progress and there has been some tweaks to the score, the script and the characterisation since previews began in February.
The soundtrack itself was recorded in mid-2009, months before the production really kicked into overdrive. Will these changes stop Love Never Dies from actually dying prematurely onstage? It's too early to say.
Still it cannot be denied that Lloyd Webber took a big gamble by continuing the story of Erik and Christine and there are many reasons to add this show to your musical collection. The album contains a strong and able cast, especially the five core characters, and although the studio recording is slightly too dry for my liking, the orchestrations are glorious to listen to.
With everlasting hits like All I Ask Of You, Think Of Me, Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again, Masquerade and the much covered Music Of The Night, a sequel to POTO was always going to be a tough act to follow.
My final verdict will only come when I see it in London next year. As they say, it's not over 'til the phat lady sings — or, in this case, Christine.
Official website: www.loveneverdies.com
Footage of the musical at London's Adelphi Theatre is available on YouTube.