Creekside Notes

Every Tuesday afternoon at three, I enter a music studio for my piano lesson. The place has become very familiar to me. Every week, I see the cleaning lady vacuuming the floor between students. I wash my hands at the sparkling basin she has just cleaned. It is part of my Tuesday routine. The room has become familiar. What I hear inside it has not. I learned to play the piano when I was still a young girl and stopped taking piano lessons when I was thirteen or fourteen because I did not intend to major in music. But I never really fell out of love with the piano after I stopped taking lessons. I continued to play whatever melody caught my ear. I booked a piano room to practise whenever one was available, and I continued adding to my collection of piano scores. My sight-reading has improved over the past few years, and I became able to play more of the pieces I loved. Some pieces, such as the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata and Schubert’s Impromptu D935 №2, had become ve...

The curtain was down, lights were off. I just stepped out of the theatre but the two boys were still singing Consider Yourself in my mind, and the music still echoing in my ear. I sat on the bus back home, but I still indulged myself in that story — Oliver and his friends occupied my mind for the rest of the evening. That’s the power of music theatre. I entered it with a ticket, but when the show ended, I could still bring the theatre home — its melodies and feelings and stories. At the end it was the emotion that registered in my mind and recorded in my memory. Some musicals struck me with a chandelier crashing from the ceiling — I surrendered even before the story truly started. Some drew me in with the slow gleam of a razor, unease building before I understood why. Some made me feel inevitable — when the girl died in the arms of the boy she secretly loved but who never loved her back, and the music together with the duet melted my heart. These are not the same experience. They are ...

https://theinstantwhen.taittinger.fr/en/the-phantom-of-the-opera/ It was inevitable to discuss the Phantom when mentioning the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera . Many vocalists had played this intimidating and tragic role, and each brought different elements to the story. The magic lay not merely in acting skills, but in the quality of sound — in tone density, resonance, and projection. Most audiences knew the “first-generation Phantom,” Michael Crawford, and many were moved by the love tragedy he created with Sarah Brightman. Crawford gained worldwide popularity precisely because of this role. His Phantom was airy and ghostly, as his voice lacked tonal density. When he said “Sing for me,” it sounded more like a plea than a demand, because his voice did not naturally carry authority. What many may not have realized was that Crawford was not Andrew Lloyd Webber’s first choice. Before The Phantom of the Opera opened at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London in 1986, Webber held a private wor...

  https://www.andrewlloydwebber.com/galleries/love-never-dies-australia-2011-production-photos You probably have heard or watched Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera before — either in a musical theater, a movie theater, or heard one or a few of its melodies on Spotify, or perhaps you still have the musical CD on your shelf? Indeed, according to Broadway News, as of April 2023 The Phantom of the Opera is one of the most successful and enduring entertainment properties in history, having grossed over $6 billion worldwide and been seen by more than 160 million people in 213 cities across 58 territories . As a cultural phenomenon, it ran on Broadway for 35 years . The Phantom of the Opera is probably one of the most successful Broadway musicals in the world. People were moved by the love triangle relationship among Christine, the Phantom, and Christine’s childhood sweetheart, Raoul. The story had a bit of a tragic ending. Christine fell in love with the Phantom, but wh...