He's a native of upstate New York, but for Brad Little, who has the title role in the tour of The Phantom of the Opera returning to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center this month, heading to Nashville feels like coming home.

 Little has fond memories of playing the lead in Phantom, a different  stage  version of the Gaston Leroux novel, in a Tennessee Repertory Theatre at TPAC in 1993.

``It really felt like a family effort, putting that piece of theater  together, so coming back to Nashville is going to be somewhat of a reunion,'' he said in an interview from Austin, Texas, where the tour was in residence.

``Phantom was probably the most exciting piece I had done up to that  time.  It was one of those pieces that just worked perfectly. Cast, director,  the set everything just was magical in that show. And they gave me a gorgeous scrapbook as a closing night gift, including photos of the whole time
we were there, which is not a normal thing that happens. I had a ball.''

The warm and fuzzy feelings are mutual.

``He was great in our Phantom,'' Tennessee Rep artistic director Mac Pirkle said. ``He has a beautiful voice, he's a very handsome guy, and we loved him. When he got the part he has now, we certainly weren't surprised. We felt it was just a matter of time before Brad moved anywhere he wanted to as a performer, because he's got that kind of magic about him.''

It's a bit spooky, too, that Little left Nashville as one Phantom (the version by composer Maury Yeston and playwright Arthur Kopit) and is coming back as another (the Andrew Lloyd Webber megahit that recently had its 10th anniversary on Broadway).

A case of theatrical reincarnation? Not at all.

``The two characters are totally different,'' Little said. ``The Yeston/Kopit Phantom is more human. You don't wear any makeup. There's a lot more information about how he became the Phantom, about his parents. And he dies at the end.''

The Lloyd Webber Phantom, on the other hand, ``is a little more on the monster edge,'' he said. ``And while the Yeston/Kopit version has a definite storyline, the Webber version leaves a lot unsaid. How was he deformed? Where does he go? Does he die at the end, does he disappear? You don't really know.''

While Yeston/Kopit's Phantom is hunted, Webber's is the hunter. Yeston/Kopit's is distressed and desperate, Webber's is over the edge and nearly omnipotent, a dark avenging angel. ``Oh, yeah,'' Little said. ``He's definitely pulling all the strings.''

The two Phantoms do have a few things in common. Both are composers. They're both in love with Christine, a beautiful young opera singer. Both have a romantic rival (called Raoul in Webber, Philippe in Yeston/Kopit). Both are a little bit wacko.

``Both characters are this guy who's lived in an opera house all his life,'' Little said. ``Everything he sees and thinks of society is what he has seen in operas. That's what he thinks the world is like. The extremes of passion, of hate, of love, of anger all these are very heightened, very dramatic, like they would be in operas. But they go in different directions. In Yeston/Kopit's version, his love of Christine is a lot more tender. Here in the Webber version, it's much more animalistic and sexual.''

Oh, and one more little thing.

``They both have that laugh,'' Little said. ``That haunting laugh.''

Differences of character aside, the Webber version is much harder on Little's voice. The actor has been touring in the show for a year and a half with no end in sight, and he played Raoul on Broadway for a year and eight months before that. The toll it takes, he said, has mostly to do with stamina.

``I'm definitely more fatigued now,'' he said. ``When I was doing the show at the Rep, there was a definite finishing date. With this show, we just got word of bookings through the year 2001. This one never ends. I would be able to approach this role quite differently, as far as just energy,
if I knew we only had three weeks of performances.

``It's the difference between running a 100-yard dash and running a marathon. You have to be smart. You have to know when to conserve the energy where it won't really hurt the show, and when you have to really go for it.''

It's a half-hour before the first performance of The Phantom of the  Opera's return engagement in Nashville, and the Phantom is getting into his makeup.

He has the routine down pat, of course; he's been doing the role for 18  months and will be at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center for five weeks.  But that doesn't make it any less traumatic.

In his dressing room at TPAC last night, Little stares into a mirror as Danette Valentino, his makeup artist, covers his skull with a latex material  and glues it down with spirit gum. It's pointed out to him that he looks like someone's strapped a giant condom on his head. ``Oh, I know,'' he  says. ``This is a safe show.''

Still, he complains, the latex is hot and uncomfortable. It makes his head sweat.

'`I think it's making my head shrink,'' he says, then grins. ``Of course,  some people wouldn't agree.''

Next comes what Scott Hemerling, the show's national press representative,
calls ``a Brad Little invention'': a rubber surgical tube, extending from the right corner of his mouth to his right ear, is glued onto his face. This helps him hear himself sing onstage an important factor for two reasons.

First, he's deaf in his left ear. Second, it removes the temptation to change his vocal timbre or overcompensate with volume.

Then comes the plastic gross-out material, the simulated disfigured skin that is hidden under the Phantom's mask until near the end of the show. Valentino glues it into place, covering up the tube. ``Brad used to glue it on himself, and took forever. If I let him do it, we'd be here all
night.''

``Here we go,'' he says, used to the ribbing.

Valentino slathers everything with a beige Max Factor base. She ``soaps out'' his ``good'' (left) eyebrow, waxes his ``bad'' one. It's a trick certain women use, she says.

``Oh, I've learned a lot about what women do since playing the Phantom,'' Little says. ``I've even learned to wear heels.''

Little muses about Nashville, where he last played the title role in Phantom, a different version of the story, at the Tennessee Repertory Theatre.

``All I can do in Nashville is Phantom,'' he says. ``If I came here in  any other role, people wouldn't recognize me. At least any role where I  show my face. I suppose I could do Beauty and the Beast.''

``Hush your mouth,'' Hemerling says.

Valentino is wrapping things up. She smears K-Y jelly on the disfigured part. ``When the lights hit that, it'll look really oozy,'' she says with satisfaction. Then on the ``good'' side, she adds a stripe of rouge.

``It's drag time,'' she says, regarding him critically. ``You could do that, you know.''

Little checks himself out, raising his chin. ``I wouldn't call that very  masculine-looking makeup. So I guess so.''

Forget the chandelier. Forget the lagoon and the rowboat. Forget the worldwide attendance figures and the buzz and the hype. The Phantom of the Opera, which opened a five week run at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center last night, has all of those things, but needs none of them.

That's because it has Brad Little. In an utterly triumphant return to Nashville (where he played a different Phantom at the Tennessee Rep in 1993), this incredibly talented actor transformed Andrew Lloyd Webber's freak-show caricature into something shatteringly human.

Little's Phantom is by far the greatest of the three I've seen over the years. He gives the character more subtle layers of nuance, physically and vocally, than I ever thought possible. This is a truly vulnerable, tortured, at times even pathetic Phantom, and his character actually develops; his transformation from hopeful suitor to jilted lover to noble sufferer has real weight, real tragedy.

In contrast to the relatively one-dimensional Phantoms I've seen in the past. Little finds a way of moving around on-stage that manages to suggest both hunter and the hunted.

It seems impossible to care about this claptrap B-movie creation, and we do more than that: we identify with him, pull for him. Ugly and nutty as he is, we want him to get the girl - and when he doesn't, we cry. Tears have no business at an Andrew Lloyd Webber show, and yet they were.

Not that Little wins us over acting alone. Make no mistake: This guy can flat-out sing. He husbands his voice through much of the show, crooning and keening where other actors bellow and bully.

But when the time comes for him to unleash his fantastic high baritone, he lets it fly, and shreds whatever emotional shields we still had in place. He blows us away, not just with power but with a focus sharp a laser.

The rest of the cast - especially lovely Amy Jo Arrington as an innocent yet earthy Christine and handsome Jim Weitzer as an unusually lively Raoul - is more than adequate.

But what makes this production of Phantom special is Brad Little. Go see him. He's the show's chandelier, glittering with light.