Yeston, who turned 74 on Wednesday, still believes that. “It was the greatest hit never to be produced on Broadway,” he told The New York Times in 2003. That’s a far cry from “Phantom of the Opera’s” 13,000 performances on Broadway, but Yeston is proud of the life it’s had. It’s had more than 1,000 productions around the world - including a current run at the Hale Centre Theatre in Sandy, Utah. It got a two-part miniseries on NBC in 1990, followed by a theatrical debut in 1991. But when Kopit saw “Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway - to this day, Yeston hasn’t seen Webber’s production - he knew their take on the Phantom was fundamentally different.
Yeston started working on other projects - a piece for renowned tenor Placido Domingo, and the musical “Titanic,” among others. “(We thought), ‘If Andrew’s going to do that show … we’ll just move on,’” Yeston recently told the Deseret News from his New York home.Īs Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” began to thrive on Broadway, Yeston’s “Phantom” collected dust on a shelf. Yeston knew better than to compete with the guy who had given the world “Cats.” And then an article in Variety brought them to a screeching halt: Andrew Lloyd Webber was going to do his own adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s novel, “Phantom of the Opera.” By the mid-1980s, Tony Award-winning composer Maury Yeston had written the music for “Phantom.” He and his writing partner, Arthur Kopit, had secured Broadway investors. Which is why the other story about the Phantom, the one that digs deeper into the mysterious character’s past, didn’t stand a chance - at least on Broadway.īut that story had a head start.
SANDY - It was a race to Broadway, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” won.įor 31 years, Broadway’s longest-running show has had an uncontested run in the Majestic Theatre, winning seven Tony Awards, playing to 18.5 million people and grossing more than $1.1 billion.
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