Without all the spectacle, Lloyd Webber’s works would molder on the stage. (Prince, miserably deficient as an actors’ director, often has superb ideas for metaphorical designs.) But Prince couldn’t disguise how static the work is.

On Broadway, Harold Prince brought a conceptual integrity to Phantom. The lyrics are godawful-not just grating but on-the-nose, devoid of subtext. The melodies-at least the good ones-are derivative, and the composer doesn’t even bother to develop them. (“Let me say this for him: Jesus is cool,” etc.) But the rest of Lloyd Webber’s output is super-saturated crap. I saw Jesus Christ, Superstar at an impressionable age and still have a soft spot for it, despite the anachronistic lyrics.

Her face fell-it was, like, two-thirds of her repertoire. A few years later, I told the pianist at my engagement party that if she played any Andrew Lloyd Webber she’d find herself covered in clam dip. It was the only time I refrained from making fun of her taste in schlock-and even then, on one of the worst days of my life, it took heroic restraint. My late, beloved grandmother treasured the Phantom of the Opera recording, and my siblings and I played it for her on a boombox when she lay dying, no longer conscious. Schumacher’s Symphony: There are people out there who revere the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, which must be why he shows up so often in elevators.

Emmy rossum phantom of the opera note