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After 35 years and nearly 14,000 performances, the curtain fell for the ultimate time Sunday on the longest-running present in Broadway historical past — The Phantom of the Opera.
Since opening in January 1988, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s megahit musical has wowed New Yorkers and vacationers alike, changing into a logo of the well-known theater district.
The melodrama a few disfigured genius who haunts the Paris Opera Home and whose coronary heart aches for the younger soprano Christine has been seen by 20 million folks and grossed over $1.4 billion in ticket gross sales.
However producers determined it was time to finish the record-breaking run after the present struggled to rebound from Broadway’s 18-month closure in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The present, tailored from Gaston Leroux’s French novel of the identical title, received seven 1988 Tony Awards, together with greatest musical, and have become the longest-running present in Broadway historical past on January 9, 2006.
The manufacturing estimates that it has employed 6,500 folks, together with 450 actors, through the years.
Sunday’s present in entrance of a sold-out crowd on the Majestic Theatre off Occasions Sq. was efficiency quantity 13,981.
The 1,600-strong viewers stood and applauded wildly as Lloyd Webber joined authentic and present solid members on the stage for the ultimate curtain name.
British producer Cameron Waterproof coat informed the New York Occasions in September final 12 months that the manufacturing started incurring losses as a result of sluggish return of worldwide guests to the Large Apple after the pandemic.
Rising manufacturing prices, which had been at $950,000 internet every week, had been additionally an element.
It takes about 125 actors, musicians and technicians to placed on the musical, which sees a chandelier crash to the stage throughout certainly one of its most memorable acts.
“There comes some extent, with any present, the place there’s a tipping level, the place the variety of good weeks has declined sufficiently that truly it is outweighed by the variety of shedding weeks, and at that time there’s just one smart resolution to make,” Waterproof coat stated.
The announcement that “Phantom” was to finish its run boosted demand for tickets a lot that the cut-off date was pushed again from February to April.
Within the run-up to the ultimate efficiency this week, the final tickets had been promoting for greater than $500 on reserving websites.
In depth renovations are actually as a consequence of start on the Majestic Theatre.
The accolade for longest-running musical on Broadway now belongs to “Chicago,” which premiered in 1996, forward of “The Lion King,” which opened the next 12 months.
The 41 Broadway theaters close to Occasions Sq. that make up New York’s cultural and touristic coronary heart common between 200,000 and 300,000 spectators each week, bringing in additional than $30 million in weekly income.
“The Phantom of the Opera” premiered in 1986 in London, the place it continues to be carried out.
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