Word: webber
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Lloyd Webber believes music should drive a show, giving it life and shape, soul and heart. "Audiences in popular theater are much more prepared to surrender themselves to a composer going down the route of the opera," he says. "In fact, they demand that the composer is more in the driver's seat than they did 15 years ago. I would never again give my score to a director until I feel it is as near finished as I can possibly make...
...What do we mean by opera, anyway?" wonders Lloyd Webber. "And where does that put Phantom? Obviously there is a world of difference between Phantom and something like Sugar Babies. But there is no difference today between opera and serious musical theater." Indeed, the line between the two forms is becoming increasingly blurred. Postwar operatic history is a Sargasso Sea of shipwrecked hulks, great lumbering Establishment vessels launched with much fanfare but 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...
...Lloyd Webber's forthcoming show, Aspects of Love, is not likely to be produced at the Metropolitan Opera House any time soon, but it appears to be the closest thing to a conventional opera he has yet composed. Based on the 1955 novel by David Garnett, a member of the Bloomsbury group, Aspects is an intimate chamber work that examines the lives and loves of a small circle of friends. "Aspects will come out closer in scale to a kind of Mozartian piece," promises the composer. "It will require from me a very firm technique, and the scenes will have...
...move along" has been a professional tenet with Lloyd Webber, who leaves as little to chance as possible. His whole life and career can be seen in terms of his desire to master a situation, then go beyond it. On the most basic level, there is his insistence on dominating everything related to his music. With a nose for business as keen as his faculty for churning out hits, Lloyd Webber keeps the reins of power tightly in his hand. No matter where he is, he is often on the phone to the staff at his London-based production company...
...Really Useful Group (the name derives from the Really Useful Engine, a recurring phrase in the Wilbert Awdry series of children's books that enthralled Lloyd Webber as a boy) comprises a producing organization, a music- publishing company, a record division, a video company, Aurum Press and the Palace Theater London Ltd., the last a separate entity that currently houses the London production of Les Miserables. Lloyd Webber is a nonexecutive member of the board (so is Rice) who owns about 40% of the stock but is not actively involved in management. When the company went public two years...