you are not
alone...Whereupon “she kisses him long and full on the lips” while
the orchestra plays gorgeously in approval. But once again the
turning point is addressed through technology. The Phantom
takes a lighted candle and burns through the magically sus-
pended rope coiled around the true lover’s neck. The lover is
saved! And before Christine or the lover has time to sing any-
thing in response to this astonishing turn of events, the mob
breaks in again, singing their pursuit song (“Track down this
murderer—he must be found!”), and the Phantom has to find a
new way to disappear. Christine does not sing anything in re-
sponse to the Phantom’s decision to release her. The depth of
the decline from Wagner is visible here, in the inability of
the modern through-sung musical to address its main issues
through music and the need to resort to the wonders of stage
technology instead. I believe it will be found that the through-
sung musical typically resorts to stage technology at these
challenging moments instead of seeking a lyrical and musical
climax in the singing of the principals. Operatic composers
can trust their singers and their orchestras (and themselves)
to dramatize their climactic scenes musically, although operas
do sometimes resort to technology. The through-sung musical
characteristicallyturns to technology. Let the orchestra play
rhapsodically while the staging takes over the plot (by making
the Phantom disappear, for example) and the seamless whole
will have been achieved before our very eyes, in a truly unified
effect between the orchestra and the stagehands.
There is one earlier moment when a recognition or turning
point is voiced in song. After Christine and her abductor reach
the lair, Christine sings:
This haunted face
holds no horror
for me now...
It’s in your soul
that the true
distortion lies...