Art and Music in the Musical

Do you have a favorite place? One may want to go to the beach while other one may like to walk in the forest. In my case, my favorite place is the city, especially New York City. It is the most impressive and amazing place for me since I had an experience on seeing musical with the magnificent sound music about a year ago. Until that time, I hadn’t seen a musical at all. After having seen it, I have some impression of it. Also, I knew that it has music and art coexist in the musical genre. So through this chance, I can have an opportunity for explaining my experience of music and art in Broadway Musical at New York City.

For my first Musical, I chose the performance, The Phantom of the Opera. It was Friday, October 28, 2016 at 5:00 pm at New York Broadway Majestic Theatre. The theater was big. It had 3 floors. The stage was also spacious. My seat located in the front center was pretty good. The sound was also really good. While I watched the musical, it seemed that I am in there. The reason that I chose this musical is that it has one of my favorite musicians, Andrew Lloyd Webber so I wanted to see his musical in NY. Actually, I had a similar experience. I saw his musical “Cats” in Korea. It was amazing because the music was similar to jazz so it was very enthusiastic. Also, the performers and the stage were awesome. Since then, I became a huge fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber. 

The musical The Phantom of the Opera has many famous songs. It contains  “The Phantom of the Opera,” “The Music of the Night,” “Poor Fool, He Makes Me Laugh,” “Why Have You Brought Me Here/Raoul, I’ve Been There,” “All I ask of You,” “Masquerade/Why So Silent.” I can’t say all the songs because there are too many so I want to go into details about some of them. The most impressive song is “Masquerade” because it’s very magnificent. All the members of the cast came and they sang the song loudly and the orchestra was grand. I like the song “All I ask of you.” The song was performed on the rooftop. At that time, Christine and Raoul had a difficult time because of the Phantom of the Opera. All and all, they swore to love each other and Raoul promised to protect her always. It was very moving and impressive.

As like this, one of the staging elements was the music performance. There was a 27-Piece orchestra as well as an organ, drums, etc.  It created an overwhelming performance.  And, another staging element was the stage. This is closer as the art. The most popular thing on the stage was a “chandelier”. It could move sometimes. It was hanging from the ceiling and it fell down.  The chandelier played an important role. I remember now that as the director, Joel Schumacher, said in his TV interview that it took dozens of French Artists to hang the crystals by hand and was decorated with more than 20,000 Swarovski crystal pendants. When I heard this, I couldn't help being surprised at this fact. I was impressed because I had never seen it anywhere.

In conclusion, it was a great performance and I understood why it is the longest-running musical in Broadway history. Above all, it was a great achievement of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music. These songs are very popular so for anyone who hears the music, it would be easy to memorize. Although I knew the whole story; because I saw the movie, I could enjoy every minute. There was a great story, dancing as well as love, fear, anger, mystery and tragedy with overwhelming emotions. In my view, I think the art and music through this musical, the Phantom of the Opera, can affect me like as intelligence, characteristic and even humanity; moreover the art and music of this stimulated my feeling.