Phantom of the Opera

The Great White Way is dark, London’s West End has gone south, and musical theater the world over has been silenced by the ongoing pandemic. But fear not, for composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is doing what he’s always done: r epackaging old ideas into new ways to make money putting on a show. He’s announced that he’ll be sharing one of his musicals each week for free on YouTube.

Webber is best known for productions like Phantom of the Opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, and of course, the recent cinematic catastrophe Cats. In a video statement, he said he’d come to terms with Universal Home Entertainment for the YouTube channel The Shows Must Go On!



Update: The Royal Albert Theatre’s 2011 production of The Phantom of the Opera is streaming for 48 hours starting today, Friday, April 17th.

Enjoy the musicals in this form, because with Cats coughing up a $100 box office hairball, Webber likely won’t be getting another big screen adaptation soon. Of course, The Metropolitan Opera is also streaming free right now. So perhaps you could catch some of Webber’s melodies in their original presentations by Puccini and Mendelssohn, before Webber stole them.