Composer/lyricist Maury Yeston (Nine) actually began work on this musical version of Gaston Leroux’s novel The Phantom Of The Opera before it attracted the attention of Andrew Lloyd Webber (and before it fell out of copyright). But Lloyd Webber got to the stage first and had a spectacular success with his show, so the Yeston version is doomed always to be known as “the other Phantom.” Nevertheless, it has gotten some productions (although not in New York or London), and this “premiere cast recording” reveals it to be a respectable effort, free of the bombast of Lloyd Webber, if not quite the superior treatment claimed in the liner notes. – William Ruhlmann
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