![]() ![]() "I've always had nightmares of not being able to get to the theatre, being stuck somewhere, or harp breaks," he says. As he plucks a few notes, warming up in the pit before performance number 8,490, he says he still gets a little anxious. Harpist Henry Fanelli has been playing in Phantom since opening night: Jan. ![]() But then, after a few weeks, I got to the point where if somebody asked me to sing something from the show, I couldn't do it. My son loved the music so much, it was playing on the radio every time I came home. ![]() "And I would wake up in the middle of the night and hear some tunes. "When the show started, the melodies were constantly going through my head," Hershey recalls. We don't want to be waking up in the morning and by mistake start singing Phantom of the Opera in the shower. "I think for a lot of us," Reit says, "we don't want songs running through heads outside the show. They've had their parts memorized for 19 of them. They've been down in the pit for more than 20 years. Trumpeter Lowell Hershey and French-horn player Peter Reit are original members. Thirteen musicians in the orchestra have been on the job since day one. ![]() But in the orchestra pit, things are different. Sarah Brightman and the other original stars of Phantom of the Opera are long gone. The pit orchestra is still playing the same notes, night after night. It surpassed Cats more than two years ago, when it reached its 7,486th performance.Īndrew Lloyd Webber's show, about a disfigured genius who operates from the bowels of an opera house, still plays eight times a week at the Majestic Theatre, on West 44th Street, where it opened in 1988. The Phantom of the Opera is the longest-running musical on Broadway, ever. Howard McGillin (as the Phantom) and Jennifer Hope Wills (as Christine) share a moment in Phantom of the Opera, Broadway's longest-running musical. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |