Project Zebra: yt-dlp on Debian + troubleshooting graphics glitches ►
◄ Customising swiss army knives is quite fun
In which I ramble about a bunch of stuff that isn't the actual musical. Precipitated by trying to find an old audio cassette copy of it I don't have a tape player to listen to with, but has a fair bit of sentimental value attached.
I think pretty much everyone knows the basics of the story of Phantom through cultural osmosis, or recognises the half-mask? Set in the 1880s, a disfigured musical genius lives in hidden parts of the Paris Opera House and is a bit obsessed with a soprano called Christine. In the modern day, if the Ghoul in Fallout (which I've not seen) is anything to go by, the internet would be queuing up to fuck Erik rather than pity him, but things take a more tragic turn in fictional Victorian-era France. All of the tracks for the original cast recording have been on an official YouTube channel since 2018, if you want to listen. Click here for a playlist.
It's a shame Lord Lloyd Webber is so easily led by his Tory chums because Phantom is well adapted and a bracing experience to listen to. Even watched with a more average cast and a chandelier that didn't so much as fall as jerked unconvincingly down ropes over the audience diagonally towards the stage; I think that performance I saw was Manchester Opera House (flyer above) sometime between 1993-95 during secondary school and the first UK tour, meeting relatives from Preston mid-way and taking grandparents. Obviously this wasn't the cast I was familiar with, plus being in a large unfamiliar building with hundreds of other people when you're a kid who dislikes crowds at any time, plus as I say the staging wasn't the best. But it was memorable. Musicals and stage plays tend to have very exaggerated tonality and easy to follow cues about intentions, so they're often of particular appeal to audiences that like things black and white, ASD listeners, etc. I love rock opera and story albums too, and fix very strongly on performances as definitive (the 'Whole Gory Story' cast recording of Rocky Horror with Ade Edmondson, Tim McInnerny and Ed Tudor-Pole is another favourite).
The original cast double vinyl was released by Polydor in 1987. The CD edition which I've had for years is as far as I know identical, slightly less than 101 minutes, and relocating the last track on disc one gives a less than 51 minute / less than 50 minute split, which fits with the grace length added to most tapes when manufactured so I think the tape is the full thing. In fact, I'm 99% certain I'll confirm when found the tape is a FUJI GT-IIx 100 like the one shown to the right with that distinctive window, black/gold shell, Japanese manufactured for European countries in the late 80s/90s (at least 89 to 91) They were sold for car stereo and similar uses where exposed more to harsher environments, which explains how it lasted through so many plays. Notes on 45spaces indicate that the formulation of chromium dioxide tape "traded some of the extended high-frequency response for lower noise" compared to ferric oxide which to my memory is accurate, the CD preserving more higher frequencies and cars being an enclosed listening environment that favours lower ones, certainly more than the compact Philips SPA2210 speakers that are my usual reference.
Update: I was right about the type of tape, but it's a C90. Which means about ten minutes is missing or something unusual was done with a record player. Maybe some dialogue was omitted? I'm really curious now.
Childhood naturally involved a lot of being in cars, which usually meant negotiation over music and is where I cemented a love of things like The Definitive Simon and Garfunkel and the original London cast recording of Phantom of the Opera. On my side, Meat Loaf generally went down a bit better than the Wildhearts but fortunately for the latter Mom wasn't too scandalised by occasional swearing. On a complete tangent, there's a now-adult German girl my sister made friends with in Ibiza who learnt some English from a tape of the Best of the Wildies. That was also the summer I consumed a lot of all-inclusive club sandwiches and cocktails and acquired long-gone very ricketty knock offs of the two Decepticon Powermaster jets).
Why am I talking about home taping? Reminiscing. "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" which is about the death of a parent hits a bit differently now. (And to lower the tone back again, she has a great voice but in the official music video Sarah Brightman looks like a snake about to swallow a smaller animal).
As far as the original story goes, as long as you know the basic outline I'd be more inclined to recommend cross genre parodies like Kim Newman's Angels of Music and if you like that his better still Moriarty ... or Terry Pratchett got the Discworld book Maskerade out of it, and that isn't the best Witches story but worth a read. Also, in passing, there's both a 1999 literary sequel to Phantom The Phantom of Manhattan and a related very bad stage sequel titled Love Never Dies.
Phantom itself I've never been drawn to find a translation of, despite Leroux being a mystery writer. There are quite a few and those that exist come in for criticism. It was originally a newspaper serial starting in 1909, making it slightly more modern than but a similar form to the beginning of Charles Hamilton's career on boys paper school stories in 1907, and both were the TV of their time. (Le Gaulois had a modest circulation of 20-30 thousand copies but is considered to have been influential in elite circles). It can no longer really be consumed as a mystery but it's interestingly inter-textual, with Erik the Phantom at one point dressing up as Poe's Red Death, and inspired in part by actual accidents at the Paris Opera House. And as many people have pointed out, whilst the musical adaptation is technically impressive and big on emotional set-pieces that can be enjoyed for that, beyond the mystery trappings the story is gothic horror about deeply unhealthy relationships. All of this combines into something that's of some historical and academic interest but I have no particular desire to read. Don't let that put you off, though, the fairly recent 2012 translation by David Coward flows well enough in the sample on Amazon.
And Leroux is a quite an interesting figure, a liberal and progressive journalist writing in fin de siècle Europe, who lived through WW1. I might be more inclined to check out The Mystery of the Yellow Room sometime, a locked room mystery referenced by Agatha Christie amongst others.
But for now I've listened to the album again, reminded myself about all sorts of things, gone down some rabbit holes, and ordered a copy of the original London cast highlights CD for the car.
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