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DOWN ONCE MORE / FINAL LAIR

Earl Carpenter&Eve Shanu-Wilson

@lasagnatrades 's master

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I still remember the way he made eye contact with christine

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not what I opened this boot to find, but slow clap for john cudia and marie danvers here

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I know I kind of already made a couple of posts on this theme, but I keep thinking about it, so.

That phrase, “the opera ghost really existed” has really been lodged in my head the past few days. In context, it’s just Leroux’s narrator confirming the factual basis behind a popular legend. With the closure of PotO Broadway, though, and my experiences over the past weekend, the quote has taken on a new significance for me.

One of the toughest things about being a fan of live theatre is the ephemerality of it all. When a show closes, it represents a loss that has become alien in most realms of media. Unlike a book, or a movie, or an album, there is no way to perfectly preserve a musical. Even when shows are meticulously documented, there’s no replacement for the experience of the live performance—no IMAX proshot or surround sound stereo recording that can capture the feeling of being there. A show that is no longer being performed is like the beam of a flashlight that has had its batteries removed—one can remember the light, and perhaps even revive it, but until then it is effectively Gone.

For decades, it felt as if this loss was one that we phans would never have to face. Up until the very last second, I think a lot of us were still in denial that it was going to happen at all (I heard people on Saturday still suggesting that another extension might happen). It’s hard to process the death of a loved one that you always assumed to be immortal. Regardless, we made sure we were there to say goodbye.

Wherever I went over the past weekend, I was surrounded by fellow phans. Though the showrunners made no acknowledgement of our presence, we saw each other. We noticed each other on the streets, all the way down Times Square, giving thumbs ups at each other’s past-season RUG shirts. We shared our memories in the bathroom line of the Majestic, in the alley out back, in front of the big Masquerade poster at half past midnight. We showed each other that we were not alone.

When a show closes, its physical existence flickering out like a doused beam of light, it’s almost as if it was never there in the first place. The things that live only in our memories can feel less like real things that once existed, and more like fantasies. Like legends. Like ghosts. Mourning is hard when you’re stuck questioning the validity of your loss.

But when I looked around that packed theatre and saw the hundred and hundreds of other people who had been brought together by the same love, the same memory, it was like it gave a tangible form to the impact that PotO has had on all of us. I looked at the faces of my fellow phans, smiling or tear-streaked, and I knew it was true: the Opera Ghost really existed, not as a literal spooky man in a basement, but as a piece of theatre that changed all of our lives. Like the velveteen rabbit said, love makes you real.

Though it’s now gone from Broadway, this musical happened—not forever but for long enough for all of us to find it and love it. And legends can never really die.

[whereisyourredscarf]

We live in a world where Phantom of the Opera isn’t on Broadway anymore.

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I am once again thinking about Raoul de Chagny

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Thinking about Little Lotte's red scarf and the blood-red noose around her Vicomte's neck. Always thinking about it.

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The proposal during ‘All I Ask of You’, featured in the original Romanian, Oslo, and Greek productions.

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📸 - Greg Mills

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Raoulstine Week Day 1; Soulmates

I might not do all the prompts but I liked this one. If this is the only day of Raoulstine week I do, I feel good about it. A Crowd of Thousands gives me serious Raoul/Christine vibes, the whole childhood-sweethearts-to-lovers trope that I adore.

PS: I absolutely know that Raoul grew up with Christine, and no he didn’t just  meet her at fourteen when he saved her scarf. 

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Raoulstine Week, Day 3: Wedding

Raoul x Christine + “Wedding/If Dreams Came True” (A Tale of Two Cities the Musical)

I’m so happy I learned how to easily gif youtube videos and make them pretty. I feel so accomplished!

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my favorite version of r/c is where they’ve known each other since they were little kids, and are also both super dramatic and lowkey obsessed with each other, which means that they pretty much communicate solely through in-jokes and references no one else would get. which is cute! but also makes it a logistical nightmare to understand what either of them is saying when the other is in the room. little lotte was completely diegetic and greeting each other for the first time in years by reciting a nursery rhyme in perfect concert is not the weirdest conversation they’ve had this week.

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⸻ your universe, rico blanco

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Thinking about them

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Raoul viconte de changy isn’t perfect but at least he isn’t a murder