Down once more

Phantom of the Opera has snuck back into my consciousness lately. A month or two ago I caught a 2-hour "behind the scenes" look at Phantom, with interviews with all of the major players. And then on Sunday, I stumbled across the 25th anniversary concert being broadcast on PBS.

I loved Phantom. Totally obsessed with it. And it helped me! I learned words like "queue" and "ingenue" (much like how Evita taught me "bourgeoisie"). Of course, I was convinced for a while that a queue was a letter. The conversation is something like:

Andre: Damnable! Will they all walk out? This is damnable!
Firmin: Andre, please don't shout. It's publicity, and the take is vast. Free publicity--
Andre: But we have no cast!
Firmin: But Andre have you seen the queue? Oh, it seems you got one, too.

See, what happens between those two sentences in the last bit is that Firmin has picked up notes (thus the name of the song, "Notes") and noticed that one is for Andre. However, just listening to the song and not seeing the show itself for another 6 years, you don't know that. And because you're 10, you don't know that a queue isn't a letter.

I spent many, many hours in the basement of our house in Connecticut acting Phantom out. I've decided that my parents probably weren't too terribly concerned about the amount of time I spent in our basement; I was making decent grades and had a fairly active social life, so it's wasn't too worrisome. But still, I was enough of a dork to actually copy out the notes from the Phantom. Props!

So I've been listening to it again, and I do still really enjoy it. Raoul still sucks, but I don't think I ever really liked him. (And that was before the movie came out, with Raoul ditching Christine as soon as the Phantom shows up at the end of "Masquerade.") (Although the guy who plays him in the 25th anniversary concert has fantastic hair.) Good plot, good characters, good music...I'm still a fan.

Not that I wasn't tempted to go to a showing of the sequel tonight and mock it for all its worth. Talk about a bad idea.