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The first contact of Antonio Banderas with ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, the acclaimed musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, occurred many years ago, on their honeymoon. He himself tells it: «I saw it two months after its premiere; I was one of the lucky ones who saw michael crawford already Sarah Brightman He smiles satisfied. We didn’t have a penny; we went to london on a crappy ticket and stayed in the crappiest hotel there was. And we got into the line at Her Majesty’s Theater at seven in the morning and at about ten-odd we arrived, freezing to death, at the box office. And a guy tells me: ‘I’m going to sell you the tickets because of the power that your smile exerts’. So I showed her all my teeth and we managed to get in and see her in the front row of the amphitheatre.”
He had the opportunity after interpreting, along with Sarah Brightman, a fragment of the musical at the gala to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber. With him, precisely, he created the company Amigos para Siempre a little less than a year ago, with the aim of generating and promoting quality musicals in Spanish -starting with the titles of Lloyd Webber himself-, and thinking of the Latin American and American markets,
The first production in which Amigos para Siempre will participate is the new production of ‘The Phantom of the Opera‘ which will set up Let’s Go with the direction of Federico Bellone, different from the original that is still presented in London, the first that is not a franchise. The premiere is scheduled for October 4 at the UMusic Hotel Teatro Albéniz in Madrid.
“We are now seeing the problems that we can find -says Banderas-, because it is a different version. It is not a reduction of the original production, but is totally new. We think it was better to have a new creative team than to reduce the editing you did HaroldPrince and make a class B assembly. It allows us to transport it better and take it to different markets. Federico Bellone, the director, has given it a different character; maybe he has a more gothic part than the original that we already saw in London ».
Antonio Banderas himself assures that he has no artistic involvement, but only in the field of production. “I’m here for the auditions,” he says, in which several of the actors who have shared the stage with him in ‘Company’ are participating. «I can tell you about the people I have worked with, why I chose them and what their behavior has been both on stage and when they have company, which is very important». Also, he assures, there are several elements in the technical direction of the show that were in the production of the Sondheim musical. “They are very prepared people, who are among the best in Europe.” he assures satisfied.
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