Review The Phantom Of The Opera

The world  première of a magnificent orchestral silent movie score in a palatial venue gives Peter Barker a thrilling experience,

The Phantom Of The Opera
Roy Budd's score to the 1925 classic silent film

The Sound Of Silence
https://londoncoliseum.org/whats-on/the-phantom-of-the-opera/

The French Gothic novel The Phantom of the Opera, first published as a newspaper serial in 1909, has since the late 20th century gained fame in a modern global blockbuster musical adaptation.

However, the first dramatised version to reach a mass audience was over 80 years ago, a classic Hollywood silent horror movie starring Lon Chaney, legendary actor and "man of a thousand faces".

Years later in South London, a young Roy Budd, the son of a grocer, developed a love for silent movies and haboured a dream all his life of scoring the Universal Pictures cult horror film.
  
Now the 77-strong Docklands Sinfonia, led by conductor Spencer Down, has finally given the piece its world première during a screening at, fittingly, the exquisite opera venue, the London Coliseum.

For Budd was a musical child prodigy who gave his first official concert aged six at the opera house in 1953.

He became a leading jazz musician, a friend of fellow musician and comedian Dudley Moore,  and composed the music, often jazz-inflected, for around forty films, most famously the iconic harpsichord score for British gangster film, Get Carter, starring Michael Caine.

After purchasing an original 35mm print of The Phantom Of The Opera and having it restored for £350,000 over the course of three years, he finally achieved his dream, creating an orchestral score for the movie.

The world première was scheduled for September 1993 but just five weeks beforehand, Budd suffered a fatal brain haemorrhage.

His widow, landed with the bill for the cancelled concert screening, then saw others perform their own scores for the film.

While Budd's was the first of several modern symphonic Phantom Of The Opera scores by various composers, like the phantom it has been a ghostly presence, only released on CD and DVD many years after it was composed and, until now, never performed live publicly.

A melodically lush and romantic score mirrors and adds to a movie, as much a love story as a horror film and a suspenseful thriller.

Budd uses a rich and varied orchestral palette for a lucid accompaniment to the Beauty and the Beast story.

Keeping a precise balance between pathos and horror, the music often reflects the viewpoint of the Phantom, his longing and torment over young soprano Christine (Mary Philbin).

Lon Chaney’s performance as the Phantom, with the unmasking of his monstrous features, still stands the test of time, especially when accompanied by Budd's visceral music.
 
The notes of an organ, used in various ways throughout the film, evoke the uncanny atmosphere and introduce the sweeping aural panorama of the Phantom theme.

Equally, grace, suspense and humour where appropriate find their way into the music.

There's the exquisitely affecting Lovers' Waltz for Christine and her love Raoul (Norman Kerry), alongside the gorgeously elegant Masked Ball, in a colourised segment, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque Of The Red Death

The composer  seamlessly integrates the themes of each individual, bringing them  together in a full-bodied score for the melodrama. The unfussy orchestration creates a backdrop of sound and musical characterisation that is both atmospheric and majestic.

Settling down after a slightly shaky start, The Docklands Sinfonia delivered a memorable and taut rendition of this piece.

Musically referencing several sources, Budd draws upon, amongst others, Richard Wagner’s opera of a doomed love affair, Tristan und Isolde, as well as the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and JS Bach.

These musical styles suit Budd's own eclectic jazz background, forming a tribute to classical composers, but also transforming into a classical work in its own right.

The logic of the melodramatic story may sometimes leave something to be desired for 21st century tastes. Yet the force of the movie's iconic imagery, with camerawork by Milton Bridenbecker, Virgil Miller, Charles Van Enger, fills the screen and mind: The Phantom's mask; the vulnerable horrific face beneath (skilfully made up by Lon Chaney himself) and  the Phantom's underground lair.

This was a one-off performance, mounted as a result of Roy Budd's widow Sylvia Noel's tireless work over very many years, first to have the music released on CD and in a DVD movie version and, finally, to be given its live première.

Combining a glorious concert of a nuanced score with the screening of a sensational movie classic could work well in other venues. On the strength of this performance in the lavish opera surroundings of the London Coliseum, it is a well-deserved TLT green light.

Review Bat Out Of Hell

Bat Out Of Hell
Book, Music and Lyrics by Jim Steinman
 
Headbanging Hell Of A Show
http://www.eno.org

Once upon a time there was a boy from New York who dreamed of writing a rock opera. 

He found a spiritual soulmate in a well-nourished singer with a seasoned-ground-beef-dish moniker. Yet these bright-eyed youths had their concept album continually rejected by the wicked executives from monolith record companies.  

But it was yah-boo-sucks to them when the album of those lost contractless boys became one of the bestselling albums in commercial music history. 

OK, Bat Out Of Hell was in reality released by a major label Cleveland International in 1977 which, almost 30 years later, went on to sue Sony Records for manufacturing copies without its logo. But why let the unromantic facts get in the way of a romantic story?

And hey, we now have Bat Out Of Hell  - a full-blown production at one of English opera's leading venues, the London Coliseum with those songs blasting out - and we mean, blasting out - echoing around its hallowed cupola! 

While Meat Loaf is deservedly celebrated as the vocal name on the Bat Out Of Hell album and its follow ups, the composer and lyricist was New Yorker Jim Steinman, who like Meatloaf, had his start in musical theatre before turning to rock. 

The evil (and of course middle-aged) Falco (Rob Fowler) and his vampish spouse Sloane (Sharon Sexton) rule over the Manhattan of the future aka the land of Obsidia. 

They over-protect sole offspring, daughter Raven  - shades of another concept album in that name - (Christina Bennington) locking her up in a luxurious skyscraper which, unfortunately for them, any old (or rather eternally young) Romeo can scale. 

Down below in the netherland (no, that isn't a spelling mistake!) is Strat (Andrew Polec) and his gang of illegals including Zahara (Danielle Steers), Strat's undercover spy in Falco Towers. 

Due to some enchantment or other, they are all frozen for ever at age 18 and duck and dive, evading Obsidian's security guards and traffic cops - TLT's automotive sidekick certainly perked up at their fate.

Directed by Jay Scheid, the fantastically talented cast on the fantastically conceived set, complete with stunning videos by Finn Ross, sweep the audience along with a raft of Steinman songs, some well-known, some lesser-known and a couple of new creations under the direction of Musical Supervisor Michael Reed.

With design by Jon Bausor reminiscent of many an album cover from when we spotty teens played those round vinyl discs found therein, it certainly lives up to the adjective spectacular and it's loud - headbanging loud and then some. 

Teamed up with this is the retro-parody or just plain clunky choreography, depending on your point of view, by Emma Portner plus Patrick Woodroffe's rather more fluent lighting and Gareth Owen's sound design.   

So whaddya we think of it? Bat Out Of Hell feels like An Experience - one which would work exceptionally well touring as a stadium show in the United States.

The old favourites are all there including the eponymous Bat Out Of Hell, loosely integrated into a bonkers' plot. So there's every opportunity to print out the lyrics and sing along - unless you're of operatic volume, you won't be heard in any case. If loud isn't your bag and you're still curious, you might want to sit up in The Gods.    

Projecting ourselves into a utopian musical theatre future, a cut-down version at a fringe venue might be interesting (but we doubt that would happen before - the movie ...??)!  

We enjoyed it as one-off but we wouldn't want to go again and again. However that's a matter of taste rather than the musical production values. It's an amber/green light from TLT and her (heavy metal) petrolhead sidekick.