#maria bjornson

[dozydawn]

Amy Webster and Ron Kravette Free Dance, 1995.

Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

#finally. a phantom program with a costume that resembles an actual costume by maria bjornson. #(meryl had a nice costume based on a movie costume by alexandra byrne in 2010 i’ll admit) #ice dance #figure skating #phantom of the opera #amy webster #ron kravette #1995 #1990s #maria bjornson #fskate costumes

[thesarahfiles]

“The Phantom of the Opera” Broadway Previews started on January 9, 1988, at the Majestic Theatre. The show opened to the public on January 26.

#Sarah Brightman #The Phantom of the Opera #andrew lloyd webber #Michael Crawford #Maria Bjornson #Gillian Lynne #Hal Prince #Broadway #steve barton

[phantomonabudget]

IT'S DONE!!! 🥳 My new Phantom tailsuit is complete and on its way to the UK!

Just completely in awe of what @ajmachete (IG) and his Denver Bespoke @vigilantelabs (IG) team have created for me! AHHHH!!!!! 🤩😳🤩🥰🤩

This suit is inspired by 90s era Phantom suits on Broadway. All the fabrics were sourced to provide the best possible match to the authentic stage fabrics. Anyone who has researched for the Phantom's suit knows the iconic patterned silk is prohibitively expensive and impossible to obtain. Finding a fabric that gives the same effect is incredibly difficult, but I think we found a great substitute! In fact, stumbling onto this fabric was the entire inspiration for this commission in the first place.

I contacted AJ earlier this year about constructing a new suit for my Phantom of the Opera cosplay. Immediately, I knew I made an excellent choice. He and his team made the whole process smooth. They are top professionals in their craft, and it is evident in this exquisite result. If you need any bespoke tailoring done for your cosplay, or if you have an idea for a cool everyday garment, please give AJ and his team a look!

Thank you AJ for this amazing piece of art! 🥰

I cannot wait to receive the suit and don the mask for the first time in nearly three years. I am so excited for the upcoming conventions, photoshoots, and shenanigans with the @the_phananigans (IG) in/around London! ❤️🇬🇧

I also hope to use this new version of the cosplay to highlight some of our outstanding artists in the Phantom community. Standby for future collaborations. 😎

#phantom of the opera #phantomonabudget #phantom of the opera cosplay #phantom cosplay #phantom costumes #the phantom #the Phantom's suit #Phantom tailsuit #maria bjornson #phantom of the opera costumes #bespoke tailoring #broadway costumes #Phantom Broadway

[jeremyonthelair]

So after ten years of watching the show only from bootlegs, I eventually got chance to see it in person, started with the Chinese and then the Korean production this year. And luckily it was the Brilliant Original in its entirety in Korea.

Playout is always one of my top favourite moments from the musical, so I made this compilation as a memory of my very first experience.

And this way, my 2023 Phantom Journey came to a curtain call.

--------------------

This video is to pay tribute to the Brilliant Original Production itself, to the original creative team as a whole, and to the genius designer Maria Björnson in particular, whose vision has been testified by a standing ovation from phans all over the world throughout the years.

This compilation contains:

• My recordings from the 2023 Chinese Production in Shanghai, and the 2023 Korean Production in Seoul

• A clip published on Weibo by @天酱_

• A clip published on Twitter by Conductor Yang Juin (Musical Director of Phantom Korea)

Available on YouTube at:

#phantom of the opera china #phantom of the opera #phantom of the opera korea #musical #broadway #maria bjornson #剧院魅影中文版 #오페라의 유령 #Youtube #it's so good to see the proscenium in its entirety #i don't tolerate any restaged or non replica production #i won't regret anything when i pass away since i watched the brilliant original

[nessie665]

At this point, I think we should just call it Maria's Björnson Phantom of the Opera because I genuinely believe the play falls apart without her costuming

#no one does it like her #even the best non reprica productions never look really that good #the phantom of the opera #phantom of the opera #poto #maria bjornson #this is about the italian prodcution if you cant tell xd

[lookingforstupid]

From Making the Invisible Visible: Tracing Maria Bjornson’s 1986 Costume Design for the Phantom of the Opera by Jane Helene Arnesen

#phantom of the opera #Maria Bjornson #theater #set design

[marleneoftheopera]

I noticed that in the very first US Carlotta Countess bodices had cris cross lacing while todays versions have some kind of an embroidery. When did this changed? Maria B clearly draw cris cross lacing to the design.

There aren't a ton of photos of the costume between about 1990 and 2006, but I am going to guess the change started happening sometime around 1989-91?

Marilyn Caskey is shown wearing the criss-cross design when she took over as Carlotta, so this photo is probably from 1989.

But then in the LA production, this photo of Leigh Munro shows a much more decorated bodice without the criss-cross. It does not list the date, but she was with the production from 1989-1992. So it may have been a new design they tried out with her or some time into her run they gave her a new bodice/dress.

I don't know why the change was made because, as you noted, Maria clearly designed a rather simple bodice with the criss-cross detail. However, Maria was heavily involved in all productions prior to her passing so I would imagine that she herself either designed or at least approved this change.

#countess dress #il muto #carlotta giudicelli #maria bjornson #the phantom of the opera #leigh munro #marilyn caskey

[fdelopera]

I’m glad that Laird got to come back to Phantom to help close out the show. He’s been with Phantom since the old sit-down Toronto production, and he’s one of the OG OGs.

I know that things are ending on an absolutely batshit note (how could it be any other way for an ALW production?) but at least an old school Phantom is there to bring down the curtain (and Maria Björnson’s chandelier).

#phantom broadway #i swear alw has a public humiliation kink - the man thrives on being reviled for the chaos he creates #don't know who's keeping the chandelier .. but if it's alw i hope it serves as a portal for maria bjornson's ghost to haunt and torment him

[cantikdaae]

I don’t know if anyone has made the comparison, but I saw a picture of a chandelier in a ballroom at the Paris Opera House. And it reminded me of the Restaged Tour Chandelier. I wonder if it was an inspiration for that chandelier?

#phantom of the opera #poto #phantom #poto restaged tour #chandelier #anything that is not designed by maria bjornson looks like it’s desperate for final touches #it’s kinda sad #opera garnier #paris opera house

[marybeatriceofmodena]

What did Andrew Lloyd Webber do to make Patti Lupone upset? Sorry, saw your tags and i was curious

Oh.

Oh honey.

You sweet child.

Anyway, get ready for one of the most infamous showdowns in all musical theatre history, with the guy who writes the straightest musicals on Broadway (derogatory) and the one and only, the matriarch, the queen, two three-time Tony award winner Patti LuPone.

So, Andrew Lloyd Webber was basically kind of a boy genius in his prime - he met his future collaborator Tim Rice when they were 17 and 20 respectively, he wrote his first big hit, Jesus Christ Superstar, at 22, with Tim Rice writing the lyrics. And it was kind of a big deal at the time because the topic was controversial (you know, the Passion with rock music), but also because Broadway wasn't that far off from its golden age and let's just say the music and style were very different from, say, My Fair Lady. Or The Sound of Music. Or Funny Girl. It was basically the Rent/Hamilton of its time. (Yeah, Stephen Sondheim was around at that time, he worked on West Side Story which was revolutionary in of itself, but he's kind of an oddball in this case. You'll understand why later.)

Their real follow up (I'm not counting Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for a variety of reasons) was a little musical called Evita, which you might know mainly because of a song called Don't Cry For Me Argentina. Or at least, your mom has probably heard it once at the very least. It's that song that's oversung from a musical while being out of context along with I Dreamed a Dream for Les Misérables. Or Memory from Cats.

Evita tells the story of Eva Peron, the wife of an Argentinian dictator, who basically screws her way to the top and ends up becoming the mistress of Juan Peron and the most beloved woman in her country through guile and deceit. Yes, I know the historical accuracy is very much debated but I know jackshit about Argentina's history except the bare basics so don't come at me. It was first produced in the West End in London, with Elaine Paige in the role, but because of Equity issues, she couldn't reprise her role for the Broadway production. So a Julliard graduate who was mostly starring in David Mamet plays got the part instead, and that was Patti LuPone.

Patti... did not have a good time during Evita, because the part is basically the kind of score where you can tell the composer is used to writing male parts, but most female singers have a two-octave range (yes, you got Julie Andrews who used to have a three-octave range, and many others, but they're exceptions), so she struggled a lot. That being said, if you listen to live recordings of her, you wouldn't be able to tell, and it got a lot easier later on. But she had this to say:

"Evita was the worst experience of my life. I was screaming my way through a part that could only have been written by a man who hates women. And I had no support from the producers, who wanted a star performance onstage but treated me as an unknown backstage. It was like Beirut, and I fought like a banshee."

This is from Patti's autobiography, which she wrote in 2007 - 8 years after shit with ALW went down. With all that said, she won a Tony Award for Evita, and she pretty much became a musical theatre household name from then on. She played Fantine in Les Misérables, Nancy in Oliver!, Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes. Meanwhile, ALW's next big hits were Cats (I'm not even kidding, Cats was a hit), and, you guessed it, The Phantom of the Opera, which he wrote in part to showcase his then wife Sarah Brightman's triple threat talents.

So, you need to understand before I continue that ALW, from my perspective, has always had a bit of an inferiority complex. He's basically associated to writing these commercially successful musicals that show a big spectacle but aren't ultimately substantial. I'm not sure I entirely agree with that, but I do think that if he didn't have Hal Prince, Maria Bjornson, Charles Hart and Gillian Lynne backing him up for Phantom, it would have probably been a Rocky Horror Picture Show knockoff people would have forgotten about pretty quickly. This is what I mean:

Yep, that was Phantom before any of the people I mentioned above (and Michael Crawford) were really involved.

Remember how I said Stephen Sondheim was an oddball? The thing with him is that his musicals weren't always commercially successful, but in general, in part thanks to being Leonard Bernstein's protégé, he was generally pretty well-respected and it was considered that his work was bringing musicals to a whole other level. Without Sondheim, you wouldn't have Jonathan Larson, and you wouldn't have Lin-Manuel Miranda. I am convinced ALW is resentful of that, and when you stop and think about it for more than 10 seconds, it's so obvious he REALLY wants to be Sondheim or at least command the same level of respect, but that's a story for another day.

So, after Phantom, ALW had other musicals that followed that either got a meh reception or outright flopped. Then there was Sunset Boulevard, which is based on the movie of the same name with Gloria Swanson. Despite all of her griefs for Evita, Patti LuPone agreed to partake in the musical as Norma Desmond, for its production in London, with the promise that she would transfer to Broadway once that production would open. And overall, after a string of flops, Sunset was actually doing pretty well.

HOWEVER. One day, while reading the gossip column of a newspaper, Patti found out that contrary to what she was promised, Glenn Close, who was meanwhile starring as Norma in the Los Angeles production, was to play Norma on Broadway. That was a complete surprise for her since no one on the production team had bothered to tell her it was happening - and keep in mind that for the news to come up the way it did in a gossip column, it probably would have necessitated a delay of a few weeks between the producers and the newspaper, which would have given them plenty of time to break the news to Patti. And Patti kind of needed the leg up because she was pretty bitter that a) Madonna was cast in the Evita adaptation instead of her; b) they actually lowered the key to fit Madonna's voice range, and she still had to expand her own to be able to sing the (lowered) score. And trust me, Patti is mad about it to this day.

So of course, she trashed her dressing room, the cast and crew weren't even mad about it because they were as shocked and angered as she was by the news. Patti sued Andrew Lloyd Webber for breach of contract, namely for 1 MILLION DOLLARS (yup, those are the real numbers), won, used the money she got from the lawsuit to get a swimming pool, which she called (and I SHIT YOU NOT) the Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool. Since then, Webber is dead to her, to the point rumor has it she had part of a building blocked during an event so she could get out of it without coming across Webber, because she hates him so flipping much she doesn't even want to be in the same building as the guy.

(There's also drama that happened with Faye Dunaway who was supposed to replace Glenn Close after she went from Los Angeles to Broadway, except they abruptly closed the show down after Close left, but that's a story for another day)

So with all the bad press, and with ALW forced to pay 1 million dollars for Patti's lawsuit, that led Sunset's productions to close earlier than expected. ALW has stayed around since, with... mitigated output, so to say. The lowest point for a lot of people is Love Never Dies, the sequel to Phantom, which some people love, and that's fine, but it didn't do well with either critics nor fans of the original show, which ALW is EXTREMELY BUTTHURT ABOUT. And like, there are so many stories I could tell about LND alone, but I will share my own crack theory about it, since it does relate to the ask.

Anyway, buckle up.

So. There have been jokes going around for years that the Phantom in LND is basically ALW's self-insert, where he displays to the world that he's totally not over Sarah Brightman leaving him (in part because making Phantom kinda ruined their marriage lmao), despite, you know, having married since. (Aaaaaakward.) So LND basically becomes this really uncomfortable therapy session where a man writes a self-insert musical about how his ex-wife made a big mistake of leaving a sensitive artistic soul such as himself. The characters from Phantom who appear in LND are all more or less unrecognizable as a result, and one who gets it worse (in my humble opinion) is Meg Giry, who was basically Christine's sweet and loyal ballerina friend who basically went into the Phantom's lair on her own to save her friend despite the danger. In LND, she's basically a bitter hag (because ALW hates women, guess Patti was right about that), who really likes the swim and even has a stripping vaudeville number about it, written in universe by the Phantom, no less.

For comparison, here's Don Juan Triumphant (the Phantom's opera in the original):

And here's Bathing Beauty (the vaudeville number):

Yeah, so... do you see why people hate LND already?

And that's not the only thing with Meg! She's also pining for the Phantom to pay attention to her and threatens to drown the Phantom and Christine's secret love child when he makes it clear that he's gonna love Christine for EVA AND EVA.

So, with everything we learned today about ALW, would someone like him view someone like Patti LuPone as some sort of crazy, bitter diva who's obsessed with him for whatever reason? Absolutely. Would he be petty enough to insert Patti LuPone into his self-insert musical, which gave us the version of Meg Giry we got in LND? Of course. Why does Meg love to swim so much and why does she drag Gustave out ostensibly for a swim? Is it a dig at Patti's Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool? Maybe.

I kind of hope we find out one day if that theory is true. And maybe start a kickstarter so Patti can add this painting from the 2004 movie in her collection.

Fun fact: during the process of casting for the 2004 movie adaptation of POTO, ALW allegedly suggested Patti LuPone to play Carlotta... only for Joel Schumacher to have to awkwardly remind him that they were not on speaking terms. The idea was therefore promptly dropped.

#YOU'RE WELCOME ANON #anon asks #Andrew Lloyd Webber #Patti LuPone #evita #sunset boulevard #phantom of the opera #love never dies

[roadtophantom]

"Starting from July 2024, the international tour of the original "Phantom of the Opera" will resume in China and then travel to more regions/territories. The original version of "The Phantom of the Opera" refers to the classic version that uses the direction and choreography of Harold Prince, the staging and choreography of Gillian Lynne, and the costume and set design of Maria Bjornson. The original English version of Phantom can only be seen in London's West End and China."

The initial list of cities are:

Shenzhen - Shenzhen Esplanade Opera Hall (Tickets)

Xi'an - Shaanxi Opera House

Shanghai - Shanghai Grand Theater

Suzhou - Suzhou Bay Grand Theater

Chengdu - Chengdu City Concert Hall

Beijing - Beijing Tianqiao Art Center

Dates from BroadwayWorld

Jonathan Roxmouth and Matt Leisy are confirmed to return.

#Phantom of the Opera World Tour #Phantom China #Phantom of the Opera #Jonathan Roxmouth #Matt Leisy

[behindthemirrorofmusic]

Remembering Maria Bjornson. Here with Hal Prince, showcasing her designs for the original production.

#phantom of the opera #poto #the phantom of the opera

[phantomonabudget]

Phantom on a Budget Website Redesign!

I am excited to announce that the Phantom on a Budget website has been completely rebuilt and relaunched! It features a more modern, streamlined, and mobile friendly design. I added more reference materials for cosplayers, costume planning resources, Maria Bjornson sketches, mask paint instructions, and more.

I hope this new site will continue to serve the Phantom cosplay community for another 20 years! Please do check it out as it is a phenomenal resource for new and experienced Phantom cosplayers alike.

If you have used the site in the past, please comment below and let me know! ❤️

#phantom of the opera #phantomonabudget #phantom of the opera cosplay #phantom cosplay #phantom costumes #phantom makeup #poto #phantom broadway #phantom of the opera costumes #halloween costumes #costume reference #costume resources #cosplay resources #cosplay

[rocklobsterart]

my version of the POTO Italy promo shot but with the original replica Maria Bjornson chandelier and costume :)

#phanart #phantom of the opera #ramin karimloo #poto musical #poto #phantom #broadway #musical #fanart #phandom #the phantom

[operafantomet]

Do you know how Maria Bjornson got involved with Phantom in the first place? Was she handpicked by one of the creatives involved, or was it under other circumstances?

Ya know, that is one of the things I tried to look closer at in an article I published on Maria Bjørnson in 2021. It can be read in parts here: https://mariabjornson.com/downloads/

Or in full here, in the original article also featuring the illustrations: https://dresshistorians.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Winter_2021_issue.pdf

Some quotes:

"Bjørnson had mainly designed for opera and plays when she was approached to design The Phantom of the Opera, a new musical about a deformed genius. The producer Cameron Mackintosh had seen Bjørnsons work several times, but it was her take on the sinking ship in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1982 production of The Tempest that appeared to have piqued Mackintosh's interest. The ship sank into the floor by simple means - some sails, a bit of rope, wooden remains of a boat - and yet these simple means created the production's own universe.

Bjørnson said, "I later asked him whan made him approach me to do Phantom. He said it was the Tempest shipwreck - I had the boat sink into the floor of the stage, and the sail washed up into the sky. That became Prospero's island". Mackintosh was to produce The Phantom of the Opera, and this was the sort of cinematic flow needed for the musical.

Bjørnson was not, however, the only designer considered. When Hal Prince was hired as the director for The Phantom of the Opera, Mackintosh recommended five designers to him. Prince said of the designers, "One stood out. Considering the assignment - a flamboyant Victorian melodrama - it must seem strage that I was especially impressed with a single-set design - almost minimalist - of an Ibsen play. A rectangle, wooden louvers, beautiful furniture, architectually spare: an inviting space to tell a powerful story"

And in my opinion, much of what made them look at her in the first place - the cinematic flow and the sense of "black box" towards intricate single pieces in the set design - is also key to the success of the Phantom design. Which I go on to discuss in the afore-mentioned article :)

#maria bjørnson #phantom of the opera #phantom of the opera design #cameron mackintosh #hal prince #in hal prince we trust #association of dress historians

[bestmusicalworldcup]

The World Tour of The Phantom of the Opera returns this summer in China, visiting the cities of Shenzhen, Shanghai, Xi'an, Suzhou, Chengdu, Beijing, and an additional unannounced city. This appears to be a continuation of the previous replica world tour with Hal Prince's direction and Maria Bjornson's designs.

#the phantom of the opera #not a poll