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It seems perverse that the world’s most recognisable opera house has never been haunted by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s famous Phantom.
That will be rectified on Friday night as The Phantom of the Opera opens for the first time in the Sydney Opera House’s Joan Sutherland Theatre, with an elaborate chandelier hanging forebodingly over the audience, and a devious masked figure skulking beneath the stage lights.
Josh Piterman and Amy Manford in the first production of The Phantom of the Opera to hit the Sydney Opera House.Credit:Janie Barrett
“It’s like the musical of all musicals,” says Amy Manford, who will play the female lead, Christine. “It’s been the longest-running musical on Broadway and West End. It’s really amazing to bring it back to Australia. It’s just a mammoth production.”
The show is an updated version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s legacy production, which debuted in London in 1986 and New York in 1988. The choreography, set and direction refresh has quickened movement onstage and blown the dust off what can be seen as a “museum piece”, says director Seth Sklar-Heyn.
“It’s an evolution,” says Sklar-Heyn, who first worked on Webber’s original show as a stage manager two decades ago in New York.
Australian performers (l-r) Blake Bowden (Raoul), Amy Manford (Christine), and Josh Piterman (the Phantom) play the lead roles in The Phantom of the Opera at the Opera House’s Joan Sutherland Theatre. Credit:Janie Barrett
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“For me, it’s like a live version of IMAX. I like being overwhelmed by an event. And yet, at the same time, I love the detail and simplicity of what happens in the foreground between a few people.”
The production was supposed to open in September last year, but lockdowns foiled those plans – and the delay brought the production into closer proximity of Handa Opera’s version that played on Sydney Harbour in April, leading to a panic that the two shows could cannabalise each other’s audiences.