Phantom Facts

  • In 1983, Director and Choreographer Geoffrey Holder approached Kopit and Yeston to propose a musical adaptation of the novel, “The Phantom of the Opera.” They struggled to find funding for a production and put it on hold to work on other projects. In 1990, Kopit wrote a miniseries for NBC entitled Phantom. Inspired by the miniseries, the Theatre Under the Stars contacted Kopit and Yeston about producing the musical version on their stage.
     
  • Phantom was first produced in 1991 at the Theatre Under the Stars in Houston, Texas.
     
  • Arthur L. Kopit, who wrote the book for Phantom, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize and three-time Tony Award nominee.
     
  • Composer/Lyricist, Maury Yeston, has won numerous Tony and Drama Desk Awards for his work on Titanic and Nine.
     
  • Kopit and Yeston are best known for their work on Nine, winner of five Tony Awards.
     
  • Phantom is based on the novel, The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l’opéra), the best-known work of French writer Gaston Leroux.
     
  • “The Phantom of the Opera” was first published in 1910 as a serial in a French daily newspaper, Le Gaulois. Portions of the story appeared in installments in each day’s newspaper, a sort of low-tech turn-of-the-century equivalent to the TV miniseries.
     
  • After it was published in book form, the novel was translated into English by Alexander Teixeira. It was at this time, when it was published in British and American newspapers, that the novel’s popularity exploded.
     
  • The dark tale of the disfigured Phantom, Erik, who falls in love with the beautiful opera singer, Christine, backstage at the Paris Opera House, has long captivated artists’ imaginations, inspiring a number of adaptations.
     
  • The first major adaptation of “The Phantom of the Opera” was a film version released in 1925, starring Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin. Further film adaptations occurred in 1930, 1943, 1962, and 1974.
     
  • Other novelists have also adapted Leroux’s text. These include Terry Pratchett’s “Maskerade” and Susan Kay’s “Phantom.”
     
  • Ken Hill’s Phantom of the Opera began its life in 1976, ten years before the famous Lloyd Webber musical opened on the West End. It was a stage adaptation which played at a seaside pier theatre, and was then forgotten until eight years later, when Hill needed a new show, and decided to revive it. It is said that without this production, there would be no Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera.
     
  • Perhaps the most well-known adaptation is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s version, The Phantom of the Opera (1986).
     
  • In 2004, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s version was adapted to film by Joel Schumacher. His movie starred Emmy Rossum and Gerard Butler.
     
  • Yeston and Kopit's Phantom is the only musical version based on Leroux's "The Phantom of the Opera" to have obtained the rights to musicalize the novel by the Leroux estate.
     
  • The novel was already in the public domain in Britain, but was still under copyright in the United States, where Holder held the rights to it.
     
  • Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress and singer, Kristin Chenoweth, played Christine Daaé, and American actor and opera singer, Richard White (best known for voicing the character of Gaston in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, played Erik, the Phantom, in the 1991 premiere production at Theatre Under The Stars.
     
  • Not only was The Gateway Playhouse one of the earliest theaters to produce Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit's Phantom, but the production was so popular that we had to bring it back to the stage later that year. The same thing happened when we produced it in 1998. It was brought back by popular demand in 2003 and 2013. And after a twelve-year hiatus, we are thrilled to bring it back to The Gateway Stage!