Love never dies, a grudge of Andrew

Today I watched the movie titled "Love Never Dies".

Official site "Love Never Dies"
Amazon.com Love Never Dies Blue-ray

This musical work is created by Andrew Lloyd Webber and opened in London in 2010 for the first time. It is a sequel to "The Phantom of the Opera", a world famous long running musical. It describes the story ten years after the event occurred at the opera house. The main characters, including Phantom, Christine, and Raoul, are not altered from the previous one.

It will be held in Japan in 2014 spring. I have already bought a ticket. One of the cast as the Phantom is Masachika Ichimura, the first actor as the Phantom in the previous work.

Official site in Japan "Love Never Dies"

To be honest, the storyline is cruel. In other words, it is too realistic. The desire of the Phantom to acquire Christine again has no longer diminished, although he abandoned her to show true love in the end of the previous work.　Raoul is drunken and indulged in gambling, maybe due to the pressure of the life with Christine. He is typically suggesting a crisis of a middle aged man. And the mind of Christine is fluctuating between the Phantom and Raoul. Her words are not that of a girl, but an adult woman.

Above all, this is a kind of a melodrama, in contrast to the previous work as a pure love story. This idea is ensured at the middle of the storyline. I dare not to write about it, however I believe that everyone agrees with me.

What it the purpose of Andrew? He has completely destructed the image of the Phantom of the Opera. Instead, he delivered a cheap, but real love and hate between man and woman. I guess that this work contains the irony that love is not eternal at all. Sarah Brightman, the first Prima Donna of the Phantom of the Opera, was the ex - wife of Andrew. Did he want to bury the memory of her accompanied with the Phantom of the Opera?

The stage of Love Never Dies is the US, different from the Phantom of the Opera. Some scores are also more modern than the previous work. Perhaps Andrew offered a modern thought of mind through this work. Likely to say, we have to face the reality, do not have a dream of true love.