http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/Phantom.mp3
It's not unusual for a high school to stage a big musical. But for a high school to stage Andrew Lloyd Webber's large-scale Phantom of the Opera is a different story.
Licensing to stage Phantom was just opened to high schools this summer. This weekend, Traverse City West Senior High School will be the first high school in Michigan to take it on.
Special Effects
When people think of Phantom of the Opera, they usually think of the famous chandelier special effect. In a jealous rage, the Phantom causes the opera house's massive chandelier to drop to the floor, killing the character of Carlotta.
Traverse City West's director Erin Peck recently saw the Las Vegas production, where the chandelier is 12-feet tall, 16-feet wide and weighs more than 2,000 pounds.
Erin Peck said: "It's a really exciting illusion because it literally drops and then there's a blackout so people that are seated in those seats duck because they really think it's coming down."
Traverse City West Senior High School's chandelier is nowhere near that large, and it never free falls. But technicians pull cables to make it swing out above the audience and back again. A blackout and a crash make it seem the chandelier has fallen to the stage.
This kind of ingenuity is necessary on a high school-sized budget, and that ingenuity was also used for another well-known special effect in the show. The script calls for a small boat to be piloted across the stage by the Phantom. So, the technical staff built a boat hull around a motorized wheelchair. The Phantom stands facing the rear of the wheelchair and drives it in reverse, reaching back to steer, just like a boat's rudder.
Musical Challenge
In addition to staging, the show demands much of the 125 cast members. There's almost no spoken dialogue. It's nearly all sung, like an opera. The students who play the lead roles of the Phantom and Christine must have vocal ranges that go from very low to very high. The production's music director, Russ Larimer, said the instrumental score is also fiendishly difficult.
The musicians hardly ever put down their instruments.
Larimer said: "We've had some players come sit in in the pit, in the string section in particular and mention the difficulty of the parts are on par with the difficulty of the Traverse Symphony Orchestra parts."
Moreover, the score is written in a way to speed up and slow down unexpectedly.
He sings: "Mystery after gala tonight, this is mystery ... something along those lines where all of a sudden it feels like you're rushing the end of the measure or other time signatures where you have to feel like you're delaying the end of the measure. It's where you add a beat or you lose a beat. There's always a freshness that goes on," Larimer says.
The costumes are ornate and authentic to 1870, the year Phantom takes place. Also, the Phantom's disfiguring makeup takes hours to apply. But the show was so well received in Traverse City, West High School added a third weekend to the run.
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