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The Phantom of the Opera, London 2008 - Leila Benn Harris as Christine

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The Show

Facts & Figures

  • The Broadway production became the longest running show every on Broadway when it overtook Cats with its 7,486th performance on January 6th 2006.
  • Joel Schumacher directed a big screen version of the show which was released worldwide at the end of 2004. It starred Gerard Butler as The Phantom, Emmy Rossum as Christine, Patrick Wilson as Raoul and Minnie Driver as Carlotta.
  • It is estimated that Phantom has been seen by more than 80 million people in 124 cities in 25 countries, and the total worldwide gross is now in excess of $5 billion.
  • The Phantom has been produced in hundreds of cities, in more than 20 countries around the world, including UK, US, New Zealand, Japan, Austria, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Holland, Switzerland, Belgium, Korea, Denmark, Spain and Russia.
  • The Phantom opened at Her Majesty's Theatre, London on 27th September 1986 and at the Majestic Theatre in New York on 9th January 1988.
  • The show has won over 50 major theatre awards including 3 Olivier Awards, the most recent being the 2002 Oliver Audience Award for Most Popular Show, an Evening Standard Award, 7 Tony Awards including Best Musical, 7 Drama Desk Awards and 3 Outer Critic Circle Awards.
  • The original cast album of the Phantom of the Opera was the first in British musical history to enter the music charts at number 1. Album sales now exceed forty million worldwide and it is the biggest selling cast album of all time.
  • The dazzling replica of the Paris Opera House chandelier is made up of 6,000 beads consisting of 35 beads to each string. It is 3 metres wide and weighs one ton. The touring version falls at 2.5 metres per second. The original version was built by 5 people in 4 weeks.
  • The Phantom's make-up takes 2 hours to put on and 30 minutes to take off. The face is moisturized, closely shaved and the prosthetics are fitted, setting immediately, before 2 wigs, 2 radio mics and 2 contact lenses (one white and one clouded) are placed.
  • 2,230 metres of fabric are used for the drapes, 900 of them specially dyed. The tasseled fringes measure 226 metres. They are made up of 250 kilos of dyed wool interwoven with 5,000 wooden beads imported from India. Each one is handmade and combed through with an Afro comb.
  • There are 130 cast, crew and orchestra members directly involved in each performance.
  • Each performance has 230 costumes, 14 dressers, 120 automated cues, 22 scene changes, 281 candles and uses 250 kg of dry ice and 10 fog and smoke machines.
  • The touring production takes 27 articulated lorries to transfer the set between theatres.

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