The chandelier has landed
Heralded by an avalanche of publicity, frantic scrambles for tickets and a scenery and equipment load-in of D-Day dimensions, the national touring production of The Phantom of the Opera opened last night in the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall.

This is the moon landing of Fort Worth entertainment events.  Last night's show was technically termed  preview, one of three, with tomorrow night's performance being the actual opening.

Fiddlesticks.  Try telling the folks who filled the hall last evening that they weren't the bonfire first-nighters.  When a show takes on the celebrity of Phantom, its first night in your town is the opening.

The cast of Andrew Lloyd Webber's megahit musical had a dress rehearsal yesterday afternoon, and it obviously aquatinted them with the Bass hall. The first public performance went off with no hitches - the famous chandelier "crashing" on cue.  It wasn't the frightening spectacle that first-time Phantom viewers probably expected.  But it never is.

(A scarier effect comes earlier when Phantom spies on Christine and Raoul from a statuary high above the Paris Opera House.)

The Lloyd Webber score sounds good in the Bas hall, and the singers sound even better.

Brad Little is a talent of impressive range - both as a singer and actor.  As the hideously deformed figure who haunts (and actually runs ) the Paris Opera House, Little succeeds in evoking both fright and compassion. He builds his signature song, The Music of the Night, from delicate whisper to powerful crescendo and brings similar joy with All I Ask of You.

To the role of Christine, the beautiful young soprano coached and mesmerized by the Phantom.
Amy Jo Arrington brings a winsome charm, a saucy sense of comedy and a lovely coloratura.  She and Little team winningly on I Remember and Stranger Than You Dreamt It and powerfully (with Jason Pebworth) on Wondering Child.

Pebworth has the not-altogether heroic role of Raoul, the spoiled young viscount who courts Christine.

Director Harold Prince's unflagging pace is maintained in this touring edition, and Maria Bjornson's sets and costumes add the perfect mixture of brilliance and excess.

The company as a whole is superior - as evidenced by the Act II opener, Masquerade,  a number
that showcases every aspect of musical theater as well as the 19th century ambiance of the hall.

This show has great fun spoofing the ornate aspects of grand opera, particularly in backstage and rehearsal exchanges.  Julie Schmidt, as resident diva unseated by Christine, is a key player here.

Davis Cryer, Richard Reardon, Pebworth and Betina Hershey salute her appropriately on Prima Donna. Yes, the same David Cryer who was Rutledge in 1776.  The voice is still there, and Cryer shows comic gifts here as the beleaguered opera house manager.

Elsewhere, there is fine work from Jennine Jones as a ballet mistress suggestive of the housekeeper in Rebecca, Steven Stein-Grainger as an egotistic tenor and Stephen Len White as opera buffo archetype.

No doubt about it, the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall isan ideal spot for musical theater.  Its first visiting musical, The Phantom of the Opera, is making its Ft Worth debut under the auspices of Casa Manana.  The show has never looked, or sounded better.

Maria Bjornson's ornate gold-and-black proscenium magically transforms the spanking-new hall into the grand old Paris Opera.  Andrew Lloyd Webber's crowd pleasing rock opera has never been known for emotional intimacy, yet on the Bass Hall stage the characters really interact with one another.  When Christine unmask the Phantom or Raoul declares his love to her, for once they're human beings, not just pawns in some tuneful chess game.

In contrast to the sound problems that have repeatedly plagued musicals in Dallas' prime venues, the Fair Park Music Hall and Majestic Theatre, almost every word come across.  You can make out individual parts in the comic sextet toward the end of the first act.

It's a cast you're glad you can hear, too.  All three leads have voices less idiosyncratic but healthier than the Broadway originals - all to the good.  Brad Little commands the Phantom's excruciatingly wide vocal range, from a solid baritone bottom to a lovely falsetto.  You hope he's not hurting his instrument with all those guttural roars.

In her professional debut, Amy Jo Arrington proves herself a stalwart Christine.  Her pure, heady soprano even boast a solid lower range.  She makes what she can of Christine's vacillations between her two lovers toward the end. The role hasn't been very well thought out by writers, but at least Ms. Arrington makes us believe in her obsession with the Phantom.

Grand Prairie native Jason Pebworth, a dashing Raoul, completes the lead trio.

Bass Hall actually makes the Phantom seem a better show than you might have thought.  In the huge auditoriums it normally plays, it can seem like a string of stale music videos all shot at long range.  In an intimate opera house, Mr Lloyd Webber's many little borrowings from operatic traditions look like homage's, not plagiary.