The Closing Curtain: Reflections on The Phantom of the Opera

The chandelier crashes for a final time as Broadway’s longest-running musical, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s extremely ’80s Phantom of the Opera, closes after 35 years and nearly 14,000 performances. Vulture’s Andrea Long Chu assesses its cultural staying power.

This episode was produced by Siona Peterous, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Victoria Chamberlin and Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King.

Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained  

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