Score
As with Phantom, Lloyd Webber's score for Love Never Dies also includes the fictional music of its time as musical fragments to fictional pieces which are taking place within the show itself. Only "Bathing Beauty" survived the post concept album cuts to be performed on stage.
Instead of the operatic passages for fictional "operas," the "stage" music at Phantasma is based on the companion pieces to the Savoy Operas, which were often burlesques and were also sometimes performed at the Opéra Comique. Many of these kinds of burlesques were based on existing French operas. During the Victorian age, nearly every popular opera was turned into a burlesque. The W. S. Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan) operatic burlesque Robert the Devil is a parody of Robert le diable, a romantic grand opera by Meyerbeer which was mentioned in the opening to "Phantom of the Opera".
These pieces were very popular among the lower class, but not commonly seen by more sophisticated opera goers. According to W. J. MacQueen-Pope:
- This was a one-act play, seen only by the early comers. It would play to empty boxes, half-empty upper circle, to a gradually filling stalls and dress circle, but to an attentive, grateful and appreciative pit and gallery. Often these plays were little gems. They deserved much better treatment than they got, but those who saw them delighted in them. ... served to give young actors and actresses a chance to win their spurs ... the stalls and the boxes lost much by missing the curtain-raiser, but to them dinner was more important.
Like most burlesques, "Robert the Devil" featured women in scanty costumes and breeches roles. In operas, these were always supporting roles. The pageboy role in Christine's second opera is a breeches role, like the part of Cherubino, the Count's page, in The Marriage of Figaro. However, in burlesques, breeches roles could be main parts.
Very little specific information is available for most of these curtain openers. However, the opener for "Pinafore", which had also been performed at the Opéra Comique in 1878, was called "Beauties on the Beach". Meg Giry's grand opening number in "Love Never Dies" is called "Bathing Beauty (On The Beach)".
Read more about this topic: Love Never Dies (musical)
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