On July 14th 2016, I had the opportunity to attend the U.S. tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera" at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. with my mom and my aunt. It was such an incredible experience to see a musical that I grew up listening to, watching, and singing in the car.
The first thing that caught my eye, as always was the curtain and chandelier hanging from the ceiling. It was a magnificent sight to see. We found our seats, waited for the lights to dim and for the show to begin.
Along with the chandelier, there were a lot of changes to the tour production, such as a Bluetooth operated stage and pyrotechnics. The chandelier is known to the cast as "Chandy," while the music box is named "Bob," and the gold statue is "Cyril."
The costumes, however are still the classic creations of Maria Bjornson, and easily recognizable.
The set was huge and had many new features. One of those features is a mirror on the ceiling of the ballroom during the musical number "Masquerade." The mirror allows audiences to capture the view from above as well as by looking straight ahead.
The musical score is breathtaking live! I thought hearing it in the movie was good, but I was wrong! There is nothing quite like hearing it live! From "Think of Me" and "Angel of Music" to the obnoxiously entertaining "Prima Donna," this score had me silently singing along inside my head!
The storyline follows the classic "Beauty and the Beast" tale, but takes place in a Parisian opera house, the Opera Populaire. It centers around the members of the opera house as they attempt to put on various productions, but each time their efforts are thwarted by the mysterious but ever present "Opera Ghost," whose obsession with young ingenue Christine Daae doesn't go unnoticed by her childhood friend Roul.
With all of its grandeur and glory as a whole, for me the moral of the story is what is most important: finding the beauty within the beast. Over the course of the musical, the beautiful Christine Daae helps the tortured Phantom discover what it means to feel loved and to love yourself. To me, that is one of the truest forms of love.
We all have our dark sides, our phantoms, if you will. It is important that we learn what makes each of us special and unique, while trying to do the right things in our lives. We may not have an angel like Christine to redeem us, but we can redeem ourselves, realize our faults, and begin to change.
Whatever our flaws may be, we need to realize that they make us who we are. They make us beautiful. We can be loved for who we are on the inside, not just for what's on the outside. Like the Phantom, we can realize that it is possible to be flawed and still be beautiful, for that is what true love means.
