"Опера сарайының күлеңкісі"

Musical by Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit

In 1984, British producer Ken Hill revived his 1976 musical Phantom of the Opera in England. This was not a big threat to Holder, Kopit and Yeston, since their musical was intended to play on Broadway. The real threat emerged when Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera became a smash hit in London in 1986. The novel was already in the public domain in Britain but would still be under copyright in United States for two more years, where Holder held the rights to it. Yeston had completed much of the score to Phantom, and Yeston, Kopit and Holder were in the process of raising money for a Broadway production when Lloyd Webber revealed plans to take his musical to Broadway. Subsequently, Yeston's Broadway investors backed out. Yeston, Kopit and Holder reluctantly shelved their plans for Phantom and went their separate ways for a time. Kopit rewrote the script outline of his unproduced musical Phantom into a teleplay for a four hour two part miniseries entitled The Phantom of the Opera and sold it to NBC, with Yeston's blessing. It was filmed at the Opera Garnier, and the only music used was opera music. It starred Charles Dance, Teri Polo and Burt Lancaster and premiered on television in 1990. Kopit said, "I told Maury to hold on. Maybe someone would see the miniseries, think it would make a good musical we'd be ready."

The story begins at the time of the first meeting of Erik (the Phantom) and a street singer named Christine. Erik was born and raised in the catacombs under the Paris Opera House and needs beautiful music – he cannot exist without it. Complications arise when Gérard Carrière, the company manager, loses his position as head of the Opera house and therefore cannot protect Erik any longer. Furthermore, Carlotta, the new diva and wife of the new owner of the Opera, has such a terrible voice that the Phantom is in torment. His salvation must eventually come through Christine, whose voice is so beautiful that he falls in love with her. He accepts Christine as his pupil, training her for the opera, but forbids her to see his face. Erik's rival for Christine's affection is Count Philippe de Chandon, whose influence helps Christine get a minor job with the Paris Opera, but it is Erik's training that helps her earn a place as a member of the company. When Carlotta's jealous machinations ruin Christine's debut, Erik spirits Christine to his underground lair and later takes a terrible revenge by electrocuting Carlotta. Carrière finds Christine and reveals an amazing secret: he is actually Erik's father. Emboldened by this revelation, Christine begs Erik to let her see his face, since his mother was able to look at him and smile. Reluctantly, he removes his mask (although the audience never sees his face), but Christine doesn't have the same fortitude and recoils in horror, causing Erik to go on a destructive rampage. Carrière helps the guilt stricken Christine to escape, and later he returns to tell Erik the truth about their relationship. However, Erik has known all along that Carrière is his father and has only waited for Carrière to corroborate the fact. Erik fears that he will be captured and treated like a circus freak because of his horrendous face, but Carrière promises Erik that he will never be put on display. The police surround him, and Erik makes a failed attempt to swing to safety on a rope. With Erik dangling helplessly, the chief of police tells his men not to shoot because they "can take him alive!". Erik shouts out to his father for help. Carrière understands; he grabs a policeman's gun and aims at his son. Reluctantly, he fires, and the Phantom falls. Fatally wounded, Erik allows Christine to remove his mask. She now smiles and tells him "You are music, beautiful music, and you are light to me you are life to me," and places the mask on him again as he dies.

The New York Times review opined: "Mr. Kopit's Phantom is no less bravura than Lord Lloyd Webber's, but he is far more affecting. Mr. Yeston's sophisticated score is the model of how a loving assortment of classical forms can make popular theater music bloom. Mr. Yeston's music charms and effervesces, valuing melodiousness and variety more than the extended leitmotif and endless bloated reprises." The News Times reviewer commented: "song for song and story for story, Yeston's score is richer and more varied, and Kopit's book provides a convincing, touching and resolved narrative that tops Webber's ambiguous ending." The Los Angeles Times reviewer wrote: "There is a lot more understanding of Erik than of Lloyd Webber's more furtive phantom, but also less mystique. Kopit puts in details Leroux never imagined." Peter Scott Pressland felt, in reviewing the London production, that "as a piece of writing, Yeston's Phantom is altogether more engaging than ALW's. It is tighter, more intimate and informed by more human sympathy. While it doesn’t produce the kind of melodic sweep and glamour of ALW, it rises in the second act to genuine emotional fervour. Erik is altogether more engaging and believable than the Lloyd Webber skulker." He stated that this makes the Beauty and the Beast theme "credible and agonizing", and that the father son theme is even more "moving in the agony of both loving and loathing the thing you have spawned."