Sing Once Again for Me: Phantom... an Appreciation?

I was talking with Connie this weekend about The Phantom of the Opera, and how it turned me on to the world of theater, just like John Grisham turned many people on to reading adult novels or Titanic got people excited about going to the movies. It's not that any of these are "bad art," but let's be honest: they are kitsch, and they know it.

So I sat down and thought about how Phantom, which I loved enough to see three times in my youth, has changed for me. It's a love letter to the theater and a fervent embrace of Romanticism. You can't deny that many find the show irresistible, and a living, breathing paradox. Yes, it's a pop-opera, but somehow elevated by its operatic pretensions. It stirs emotions despite the mega-musical trimmings and trappings: the hundred-some trap doors, the dry fog that spills onto the poor orchestra. It's the epitome of everything wrong with long-running spectacles, yet wouldn't you rather see it than Mamma Mia!?

It worked well enough to survive this long, garner a Las Vegas run without casting Celine Dion, and outlast a film adaptation with beautiful sets and vocal mis-casting. The thinness of each role, which also plagues the show on stage, originates in Gaston Leroux's late-nineteenth-century novel: a true "pulp fiction," sewing together detective-story journalism with eerie Gothic archetypes. The sweet ingenue with a dark past, the sinister but cultured villain: both would be resurrected in the realm of film noir, but without the innocents like dashing-but-dumb Raoul. What keeps it Romantic is artist and audience's longing for the tortured Heathcliff figure, though earthbound convention would not permit such a spiritual, sensual union for the heroine.

I'd be the first to criticize those who foolishly call Phantom an opera. But really, its virtues/flaws are how many stereotype opera: vocal acrobatics come first, wrapped in elaborate stagecraft, while substance is checked at the door with your coats. The beauty of Phantom is that it doesn't need substance. Just like many Andrew Lloyd Webber vehicles, the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts. If we try hard, we could search for deeper meaning: something about beauty internally, and the cruelty of a society bent on persecution. But Phantom echoes the 1980s era of excess and Reaganomics more than anything. Think of how Bret Easton Ellis characterized Les Miz, another '80s British Invasion bombast, in American Psycho as the ticket for the rich and soulless. We as an audience think that because the sopranos sing higher than before (don't mind that Christine's high E is prerecorded) and the pyrotechnics outweigh the Fourth of July's, size matters on all levels.

And yet, cynics abate! In 2009, Phantom is far more relevant than the still-touring Rent; maybe it's the music. Typical through-sung Lloyd Webber, but with more stolen Puccini than ever before. (If you think that he doesn't recycle fragments of classical music in his melodies, listen to "I Don't Know How to Love Him" and the violin entrance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto's second movement.) Thievery or tribute? Well, both; it's part of the paradox. His score is a mixture of influences. In diegetic opera scenes, he spoofs Mozart coloratura up through twelve-tonal dissonance.

The title song: great on its own, jarring in context. Lots of sound and fury symbolizing niente. It's like Queen just took over the theater. Christine rocks out to silent-movie "horror" chords and a disco beat. Primo example of schlock-aretta.

But let's take "All I Ask of You," more harmonious with the rest. It's brazenly a break-out hit, and yet the music writing is mature. Listen to the descending ninth on "Say you'll love me," and then the descending seventh in "every waking moment." Harmonies shift on that same phrase under the repeated notes ("waking moment"). Unexpected dissonance when the chorus enters the second verse: "that's all I ask of you" ends with a D-flat, while "Let me be your shelter" overlaps on an E-flat.

Upon this melody sit the words of Charles Hart. And he gives the actors nothing:

Say you'll share with me one love, one lifetime,
Say the word and I will follow you.
Share each day with me, each night, each morning.
Say you love me. (You know I do.)
Love me: That's all I ask of you.

Seems she asks an awful lot. If Sondheim had written this, the irony would be obvious: she doesn't really want the safety white-bread Raoul offers, she just makes herself believe that. But instead, we get platitudes. Each syllable scans well, and there's lovely alliteration ("to hold me and to hide me"). But this is empty poetry. Unlike in penny-dreadful-inspired Sweeney Todd, there's nothing behind these stock characters, nothing true beneath the artifice.

Granted, the title role is showy. Another part of the illusion: every time you hear the Phantom's voice from off-stage, it's actually recorded in advance, because it doesn't make sense otherwise. In act one, he basically sings two big numbers and then leaves until the last five minutes, when he pops up to hurl a chandelier at us. Not much work for all that makeup. Carlotta, who actually sings her high tessitura eight shows a week, is also a flashy part; the two romantic leads are thankless. This show has probably placed tons of Christines into career limbo. What do you do after you've mastered the art of sweet, vacuous pseudo-legit pop soprano? If you're lucky, you'll get hired for the 2010 sequel, Love Never Dies. (Rebecca Luker was a lucky Christine: she triumphed during 1990s revival-mania. Recently Sierra Boggess got to expand her range with The Little Mermaid, as a sweet, vacuous belting pop soprano.)

Here's something that bugs me: We meet Christine singing a pop ballad masquerading as an aria, "Think of Me." Then Raoul jumps in, in a box in the opera house. Is he, by dramatic logic, really singing? I hope not; major audience faux pas. Is his "singing" an expression of internal monologue? Then the melody returns in "Masquerade," but neither is actually singing within the world of the show. We could concoct an argument for this, but it's more honest to say it's sloppy recycling of music.

But there are also nice things in the score. Look at the internal rhyme in all lyrics set to "Angel of Music":

Angel of Music, guide and guardian,
Grant to me your glory.
Angel of Music, hide no longer,
Secret and strange angel.

Angel or father? Friend or Phantom?
Who is it there staring?
Angel, oh speak, what endless longings
Echo in this whisper?

The comedic lyrics in "Notes" a la Gilbert and Sullivan use some cool wordplay:

It's really not amusing.
He's abusing our position.
In addition, he wants money.
He's a funny sort of specter
To expect a large retainer,
Nothing plainer,
He is clearly quite insane.

And it's easy not to realize that the final lines ("You alone can make my song take flight / It's over now, the music of the night") are actually set on the "All I Ask of You" melody. The orchestra comes crashing in, though, with a swell of "The Music of the Night" to suggest the tunes are forever inseparable. And unstoppable; they repeat all night long! But see, it's that Phantom paradox again: just try to get them out of your head.