The lighting, intertwined with the sound effects and prop movement, took the musical over-the-top, and made it perhaps, the most inspiring, exhilarating, and well-developed performance I have ever experienced in my life.Īs a novel, The Phantom of the Opera is itself an incredible piece however, as a musical, it’s even more of a delight.

The most wonderful part of the whole musical, though, had to be the changing sets, and more specifically, the effects that fed into the performance’s mysterious aura. The costume design was rhythmic, colorful, and enchanting. The cast was dynamic, filled with both charisma and very, very powerful lungs. The orchestration, under the direction of David Cullen and Andrew Lloyd Webber, was a pure musical delight. The Tony Award winning production, which continues to reign at the Majestic Theatre of Times Square, has been performed well over 10,000 times and the afternoon show I attended emulated just that: a perfect articulation of one of the most revered pieces to have ever been written. The longest-running Broadway show The Phantom of the Opera is not only a New York musical masterpiece, but a global phenomenon.

The phantom of the opera costume design