Word: evitas
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Some of the show's lures are known commodities: Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar) and Director Harold Prince (Cabaret, Follies) have mounted some of the flashiest spectaculars of recent years, including their prior collaboration, Evita. Practically everyone, it seems, has seen a movie version of Phantom, although few have read Gaston Leroux's turgid 1910 thriller about the hideously misshapen genius who constitutes himself the shadow ruler of the Paris Opera House and, upon becoming infatuated with a chorine, maneuvers her career from afar. The beauty-and-the- beast theme and subterranean wonderland setting echo the myths...
...even Evita's success could patch over the growing rift between composer and lyricist, and so they parted professional company. "I'm not as interested in working for the sake of working," said Rice. "Andrew wants to be in the center of the musical-theater world all the time." Since the breakup, Rice has had a modest London hit with his Plantagenet saga Blondel and a major triumph in Chess, a cynical look at a championship chess match between a Soviet and an American that boasts a brilliant score by Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, two members of the rock...
...last Rice-Lloyd Webber show was also the best and the most daring: Evita. The authors were condemned for glorifying the right-wing Eva and Juan Peron, even though they intended the show as an allegory of the deteriorating political situation in England in the mid-'70s. Like Superstar, Evita was first released as a record. The task of getting it onstage devolved upon Director Prince; watching Prince put the show together turned out to be a most instructive lesson for Lloyd Webber. "When I came into Evita, there was no script, just a lot of numbers in a shape...
...quickly sent to the bottom under their own weight. Many opera- house successes have come instead from composers outside the academic tradition. Sondheim's Pacific Overtures opened the season at the English National Opera last fall. Sweeney Todd has been performed by the New York City Opera. Last year Evita was produced at the Staats-operette in Dresden...
...British composer of Evita and Cats has his biggest hit yet in Phantom, which opens Jan. 26 after an all- time- record advance sale. With his shows playing from Budapest to Tokyo, Lloyd Webber, 39, presides over a musical empire that brings him more than $1 million a month (though not always critical acceptance) and is making him a superstar. See SHOW BUSINESS...