"Love Never Dies"

I have to admit that I was very sceptical about Andrew Lloyd Webber's announced plans for a new "Phantom of the Opera" musical when I first heard about it, and was mildly disappointed but not at all surprised when the show, after eventually struggling to the stage, garnered poor reviews and failed to become a hit. But I was curious enough about it to pick up a discarded "Daily Mail" cover CD featuring songs from both "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Love Never Dies": and to my delight I found that the 'new' songs were actually extremely good. The score is very recognisably Lloyd Webber without yielding to the temptation to descend into pastiche: this is new music, not a re-hash of past success, yet for the first time in a dozen years or more it's melody worth listening to -- tunes you catch yourself humming out of context.

I soon found myself actively considering looking for a full recording rather than the half-dozen highlights included on the disc, and all the criticisms (numbers sounded like Tin Pan Alley showtunes rather than doom-laden European opera, dialogue was sung-though rather than spoken, unacceptably tragic ending, too much Raoul and Phantom and not enough Christine) seemed perfectly acceptable and possily even selling-points from my point of view. Unfortunately, then I came across the plot.

From the songs I'd heard I assumed I'd already gathered the gist of it (it later turned out that I'd massively misattributed the singers in one of them...) I'd been somewhat shocked, but the developments weren't such that I couldn't logically swallow. What I then discovered via the Internet and couldn't take was the plot's blithe assumption, supposed to be shared by the audience, that Christine Daaé had apparently have been pining after the Phantom from the first, and that she is constrained only by convention from taking her child and going off with her true soulmate.

( So why am I not on the side of the Phantom? )