Love Never Dies premiered ten years ago in the West End and wowed audiences all over the world with productions and special concerts set in Australia, Denmark, Hamburg, Japan, Vienna and a full North American Tour. We've been celebrating all over Twitter and Instagram sharing lyrics, music and behind the scenes videos from the production that started it all.
We already made an emotional post about it (you can read it
here), but we wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate this ten year anniversary with some facts you may
(or may not) know about Love Never Dies! Did you know that...?
Andrew Lloyd Webber first began plans for a sequel
to his 1986 hit musical, The Phantom of the Opera, in 1990.
Following a conversation with Maria Björnson, the designer of The Phantom of the Opera, Lloyd Webber decided that were a sequel to come about, it would be set in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. One of his ideas was to have the Phantom live above ground in Manhattan's first penthouse, but he rejected this when he saw a TV documentary about the Coney Island fairground.
Frederick Forsyth published his novel The Phantom of
Manhattan in 1999, with ideas that he developed alongside
Andrew Lloyd Webber for the sequel.
Lloyd Webber began collaborating with author Frederick Forsyth on the sequel project in the early 90s, but it soon fell apart as Lloyd Webber felt the ideas they were developing would be difficult to adapt for a stage musical. Forsyth went on to publish some of the ideas he had worked on with Lloyd Webber in 1999 as a novel entitled
The Phantom of Manhattan.
The original title for Love Never Dies
was 'Phantom: Once Upon Another Time'.
And we all know where did that title go when the musical finally premiered as "Love Never Dies". Now we can all hum and sing our hearts out to Once Upon Another Time with Christine and The Phantom just after Beneath a Moonless Sky.
You can hear musical arrangements and orchestrations of the title
song 'Love Never Dies' in Our kind of love from
The Beautiful Game and The heart is slow to learn.
Webber had had in mind a Phantom of the Opera sequel for years, but something didn't felt right yet, so he went on working with other musical productions and you can hear some of his musical arrangement ideas into other of his own productions. Some Till I Hear You Sing notes can be also heard on If not for me for her from The Beautiful Game, and some Beneath a Moonless Sky can be heard in Joel Schumacher's The Phantom of the Opera movie adaptation.
Andrew Lloyd Webber had to reconstruct the entire score
after his cat climbed into his piano and deleted EVERYTHING.
The sequel was delayed because Lloyd Webber's six-month-old kitten Otto, a rare-breed Turkish Van, climbed onto Lloyd Webber's Clavinova digital piano and managed to delete the entire score. Lloyd Webber was unable to recover any of it from the instrument but was eventually able to reconstruct the score.
The reprise of Love Never Dies sung by the Phantom
in the final scene was improvised.
Yup, we're talking about that last scene of the show, when the audience is in full tears and The Phantom reprises the title song, heartbroken, to Gustave. It happened in the final performance of Love Never Dies in the West End. Ramin Karimloo improvised it all at the moment, and Andrew Lloyd Webber loved it that much that he incorporated it into the Australian production. Thanks, Ramin!
The fastest costume change is done in under 18 seconds.
Meghan Picerno herself shared this piece of trivia. The fastest costume change is done by Christine in under 18 seconds. In her words: "As soon as the stagecoach door closes during my arrival scene, I am changing inside and then I step out from the back to assemble the rest of my costume before my next solo". Impressive.
The Danish production of Love Never Dies has been
the only official non-replica performed in 10 years.
The production starred Tomas Ambt Kofod and Bo Kristian Jensen sharing the role of the Phantom and Danish coloratura soprano Louise Fribo as Christine. It featured new production designs by Paul Farnsworth, new stagings by Daniel Bohr, and new choreography by Hayley Franks Høier. Karen Hoffmann, who translated the score of Phantom of the Opera into Danish, was also commissioned to translate this score.
The Phantom's alias Mr. Y is a play on the word Mystery,
literally spelling Mystery as Mister-y (Mr. Y).
Ok, this one may seem pretty lame trivia. But we're still surprised that most people do not realize this at first. So this one is a lifesaver. If you feel like this one was meh trivia, try this one: The character Gustave is named after Christine's father. Ramin Karimloo was the actor who originated the role in the West End and, coincidentally, he was the actor who portrayed Christine's father in 2004 Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera movie adaptation. So that makes him the only actor (to date) who has portrayed Christine's lover Raoul, The Phantom and Christine's father. All three men in Christine's life.
In theatre, it is considered unlucky to wear blue,
or to have peacock feathers onstage.
Well, I believe this one works without any explanation. Christine's costume in her last scenes is a blue dress with peacock feathers, and she performs the title song against a blue background with feathers that fill the entire stage. If that ain't calling bad luck, we don't know what it is!
Love Never Dies is returning to the UK for the first time since it premiered ten years ago. And we can't stop singing that "TEEEEN LOOOONG YEAAAARS" line from Till I Hear You Sing. Love Never Dies will embark on its first-ever UK tour on September 26th at Leicester's Curve Theatre, where it will play until October 10th, and then it will visit the Manchester Opera House from October 14th to October 24th.
