Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 21 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass.
The Phantom of the Opera is a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Charles Hart, additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe and a libretto by Lloyd Webber and Stilgoe. Based on the 1910 French novel of the same name by Gaston Leroux, it tells the tragic story of a beautiful soprano, Christine Daaé, who becomes the obsession of a mysterious, masked musical genius living in the subterranean labyrinth beneath the Paris Opéra House.
In theatre, an understudy, referred to in opera as cover or covering, is a performer who learns the lines and blocking or choreography of a regular actor, actress, or other performer in a play. Should the regular actor or actress be unable to appear on stage, the understudy takes over the part. Usually when the understudy takes over, the theater manager announces the cast change prior to the start of the performance. Coined in 1874, the term understudy has more recently generally been applied only to performers who can back up a role, but still regularly perform in another role.
The Really Useful Group Ltd. (RUG) is an international company set up in 1977 by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It is involved in theatre, film, television, video and concert productions, merchandising, magazine publishing, records and music publishing. The name is inspired by a phrase from the children's book series The Railway Series in which Thomas the Tank Engine and friends and other locomotives are referred to as "Really Useful Engines".
Dave Willetts is an English singer and actor known for having leading roles in West End musicals.
Ramin Karimloo is a Canadian actor, singer and songwriter recognized for his work in London's West End and New York's Broadway theatre.
Gavin Lee is an English actor who has appeared on the stage in musical theatre, notably as Bert in the musical Mary Poppins, in both the West End and on Broadway, and as Squidward Tentacles in the original Broadway cast of SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical.
Dame Gillian Barbara Lynne was an English ballerina, dancer, choreographer, actress, and theatre-television director, noted for her theatre choreography associated with two of the longest-running shows in Broadway history, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. At age 87, she was made a DBE in the 2014 New Year Honours List.
Summer Peta Vaigncourt-Strallen is an English actress who has performed various roles on stage and screen. Her most notable theatre credits include Meg Giry in the West End production of Love Never Dies and Maria von Trapp in Andrew Lloyd Webber's revival of The Sound of Music at the London Palladium.
John Cudia is a classical tenor singer and a musical theatre actor who has played many of the biggest roles in musical theatre on Broadway.
Peter Lockyer is an American actor and tenor. He was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. As a child, he split his time between Toronto and Connecticut, and went to the same high school as the actress Gretchen Mol. Lockyer has appeared in numerous Broadway productions, including Miss Saigon as Chris Scott, Chicago as Billy Flynn, The Phantom of the Opera as Ubaldo Piangi and as a Phantom/Raoul/Andre understudy, Les Misérables as Marius Pontmercy and La Boheme as a Rodolfo understudy on Broadway. He has also appeared in the 25th anniversary US tour of Les Misérables as Jean Valjean. He appeared on TV with Bette Midler in a 1993 adaption of Gypsy.
Love Never Dies is a romantic musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Glenn Slater, and a book by Lloyd Webber, Ben Elton, Frederick Forsyth, and Slater. It is a sequel to the long-running 1986 musical The Phantom of the Opera and was loosely adapted from Forsyth's 1999 novel The Phantom of Manhattan.
David Thaxton is a Welsh singer, actor and musical theatre and opera performer. He starred in the Donmar Warehouse's Passion, for which he won the 2011 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical.
Earl Carpenter is an English musical theatre actor and singer, recognized chiefly for his work in London’s West End. He is known for his performances as Inspector Javert in the stage musical Les Misérables and as the title character in The Phantom of the Opera, both roles he has played on and off for two decades. He is widely known for his rich, deep baritone singing voice.
The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall is a 2011 British concert film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical The Phantom of the Opera, which in turn was based on the 1910 French novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux.
James Paul Smagula is an American actor. He is best known for his work in theatre as well as television serieses such as The Sopranos, Bones, Grey's Anatomy, Parks and Recreation, and Rizzoli & Isles as well as films, including The Island and The Producers.
Paul Ettore Tabone is an Australian-born lyric tenor opera singer and musical theater actor. Dubbed "Australia’s own Bocelli," Tabone has performed at the Romanian National Opera, Bucharest, Teatro Carlo Felice in Italy, Teatro del Giglio in Italy, and on Broadway.
Tam Mutu is an English stage and screen actor. He began his career on the West End in the early 2000s. He was part of the original West End production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies (2010–2011) before starring in the revivals of Les Misérables (2013–2014) and City of Angels (2015). That same year he starred in the original Broadway musical Doctor Zhivago. He returned to Broadway in 2019 with Moulin Rouge! The Musical; for his supporting role of the Duke of Monroth he was nominated for a Grammy Award. On screen, he had a recurring role on the Netflix show Medici.
Jason Forbach is an American actor and singer. He is known for portraying Rapunzel's Prince and the Baker in Into the Woods, Enjolras in Les Misérables. and Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera.
Cris Groenendaal is a retired American musical theatre actor and opera singer. He has performed in the original Broadway productions of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Sunday in the Park with George, The Phantom of the Opera and Passion, as well as appearing in the original cast of the 1996 Broadway revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
