It was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s manifesto for what musical theater should be and, ultimately, what it would become: a shrine to the power of song.
He had practically defined the British megamusical of the 1980s: breathtaking visuals, timeless themes, and above all a fully sung-through structure, usually with a strong pop influence. His work divided critics, but Lloyd Webber himself, a merry populist with a growing Pre-Raphaelite art collection, saw no contradiction between artistic integrity and commercial appeal.
In truth, Lloyd Webber was borrowing more than music. At 21, he had fallen in love with a “deliciously open-faced” 16-year-old girl named Sarah Hugill, marrying her just weeks after her 18th birthday; now he was leaving her for Brightman, a formeractress 12 years his junior whom the tabloids dubbed “Sarah II.
had done for Shakespeare: It provided a night at the opera for people who, as a rule, did not go to the opera. In the English-speaking world, opera is kept alive by an elite donor class whose tastes rarely venture beyond the 19th century. What Lloyd Webber offered, alternatively, was a pleasing impression of opera — continuous singing, throbbing vibrato, very high notes — without the infamous longueurs or unintelligible vowels.
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