“Forgotten Hollywood”- Phantom to Close on Broadway…
“`The longest running show in Broadway history is coming to an end. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera will close at the Majestic Theatre on February 18th, 2023. The show will celebrate its thirty-fifth anniversary just a couple of weeks prior to its final curtain, celebrating that milestone on January 26th. By comparison, Chicago has to play for eight years on Broadway to break Phantom’s record.
“`Ticket sales for all Broadway shows slowed dramatically during the pandemic, including for Phantom, which has continued to see a decline. It dropped from 255,000 in weekly attendees in May to 180,000 in September. The show is set to go on internationally. London’s production celebrates its thirty-sixth birthday on October 9th; the new production in Melbourne, Australia is expected to continue, and a Mandarin-language version will debut in China in 2023.
“`The Phantom of the Opera was created by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, director Hal Prince and producer Cameron Mackintosh. Based on the classic novel Le Fantôme de L’Opéra by Gaston Leroux, the show premiered on London’s West End in October 1986 before opening on Broadway on January 26, 1988. Film versions have starred Lon Chaney and Claude Rains.
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“`Irene Papas was a Greek actress who appeared in seventy films. She gained international recognition with award-winning motion pictures as The Guns of Navarone, Zorba the Greek, Anne of a Thousand Days and Z. Papas was discovered by Elia Kazan in Greece, where she achieved widespread fame.
“`She starred in a Greek film production of Antigone, for which she won Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival. She would go on to star in a number of film adaptations of classical Greek plays, including Electra, Iphigenia and The Trojan Women; the latter in which she earned accolades from the National Board of Review.
”’Irene Papas (above right) was ninety-three.
Until next time> “never forget”
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 18th, 2022 at 12:01 am and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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