Entry tags:
Love still Never Dies
The process of revising my "Phantom of the Opera" fan-fiction (now entitled somewhat grandiloquently "Beyond the Abyss"; I preferred "The Choices of Raoul de Chagny", but on rereading I found I'd included so many unwitting references to 'the abyss', from the third paragraph to the very end, that I'd obviously intended it as a subconscious title) was interrupted for a couple of days by the intrusion of an entirely unintended "Love Never Dies" fan-fiction plot...
And since most of my musings on the subject are -- or will I hope be -- now included in that story (should it ever see the light of day), I'll note down only the insight that didn't make it into the story: part of the problem with "Love Never Dies" as a sequel is that Lloyd-Webber has effectively exchanged the roles of Raoul and Phantom (this cannot surely have been subconscious -- he even has Raoul claim that "behind this mask I wear" there is only horror...). But re-running the story with that switch-over means that what you end up with is an opera that is Raoul's tragedy (as the original was the Phantom's tragedy) but still thinks it's the Phantom's.
And since most of my musings on the subject are -- or will I hope be -- now included in that story (should it ever see the light of day), I'll note down only the insight that didn't make it into the story: part of the problem with "Love Never Dies" as a sequel is that Lloyd-Webber has effectively exchanged the roles of Raoul and Phantom (this cannot surely have been subconscious -- he even has Raoul claim that "behind this mask I wear" there is only horror...). But re-running the story with that switch-over means that what you end up with is an opera that is Raoul's tragedy (as the original was the Phantom's tragedy) but still thinks it's the Phantom's.