phantom of the opera 25th anniversary ramin karimloo

The negatives for this video are mostly technical, including the need to use rather obvious microphones on wires near the performer’s mouths to get the audio quality needed for recording. The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall was a special presentation in honor of the show’s 25th anniversary, and featured Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom, Sierra Boggess as Christine, Hadley Fraser as Raoul, and Wendy Ferguson as Carlotta. (My own feeling has always been that the ideal movie Phantom would have been a high quality drawn cartoon using the original cast’s voices, something that’s lately been rumored as a possibility for Wicked, though probably we’ll just end up with the usual semi- singing movie stars.) Gerard Butler was arguably a better singer than Russell Crowe in Les Misérables, but not much. That’s not to detract from this 25th anniversary production, which is superb, but a similar video of the original would have been a vast improvement on the movie. This is what they should have done with the original West End production of The Phantom of the Opera back in 1986, when it still had Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman in it.

The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall

Phantom of the opera 25th anniversary ramin karimloo