2013-05-22T12:26:16-04:00 Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=lord-andrew-lloyd-webber Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1032587 2011-10-26T19:00:00-04:00 2011-12-26T05:12:01-05:00

Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lord-andrew-lloyd-webber/
From when I was six, my long suffering parents would rent a house in the summer holidays close to a cluster of buildings I wanted to see. They finally thought enough was enough when I persuaded them to rent a house near Port Talbot so I could see Margam Abbey. This was when I discovered Cardiff Castle; but that's another story.

My love of architecture has never dimmed, which explains why one unusually beautiful day last summer, I found myself among 300 or so other guests at St John's Smith Square in Westminster, invited by English Heritage to hear the results of its research into the condition of the country's historic places of worship - and, importantly, to celebrate all those who do so much to save these much loved buildings from irreversible decay.

As I talked to Simon Thurley, chief executive of English Heritage, I became increasingly aware that there are hard working groups and individuals rescuing all kinds of heritage all over the country. They all deserve greater recognition. In saving our heritage, they are saving a part of our identity - that intangible but vivid feeling that it is good to live here.

Just think for a moment about your local heritage. Was there a Building Preservation Trust who saved the old water mill? And another group of enthusiasts who saved the art deco cinema? Is the Civic Society working with the council to improve the historic town centre?

Was it a friend's group who succeeded in getting a Heritage Lottery Fund grant to restore the Victorian park? Or perhaps there is a young couple busy restoring that derelict Edwardian villa at the end of the street?

To my mind, these people are heritage angels and their endeavours deserve more glory. It is for this reason that I am delighted to help organise a new annual award scheme, The English Heritage Angel Awards to celebrate the people behind the best heritage rescues in the country.

Anyone who has worked on buildings or a historic site that is, or is eligible to be, on English Heritage's Heritage at Risk Register are valid contenders.

The register lists historic buildings, monuments, archaeological remains, parks, gardens, landscapes, conservation areas, battlefields and even shipwrecks. All are among the country's most important treasures and all, for one reason or another, are on the point of collapsing, dissolving or disappearing.

The 2010 register reveals that one in 32 Grade I and II buildings is at risk, as are one in 14 conservation areas, one in six scheduled monuments and one in 16 registered parks and gardens.

The register is being updated to include, for the first time, places of worship. That is a lot of heritage to save and in the present economic climate, no one is pretending it is easy. The good news is that 311 entries were removed from the register last year. The bad news is that there are 5,504 still to go.

I know there are hundreds of angels out there and I want to show the world their extraordinary efforts in helping to save England's precious heritage from neglect and eventually decay, if not for these people.

The Inaugural English Heritage Angel Awards Ceremony will be held on Monday 31 October at the Palace Theatre in London's West End. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.996117 2011-10-05T19:00:00-04:00 2011-12-05T05:12:01-05:00

Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lord-andrew-lloyd-webber/
Like Cats a few years before, nothing any reviewer said could remotely alter the fact that Phantom had chimed with its audience and was unstoppable. Just like Cats, Phantom did not get great across the board reviews. They were wildly polarised between those who really did or really wouldn't surrender to the music of the night. But unlike even Cats, whose first previews were thrilling but bumpy, the audience reaction to Phantom's first preview suggested an unstoppable hit was in our hands. Hal Prince, our brilliant showman director, was so sure that he jokingly suggested that we all take a holiday and came back for opening night.

Although it's true that Phantom is the only show I have ever been involved with that was entirely unchanged during previews, I wish I could say I truly had the best time of my life during those heady days.

Two years before, I had married Sarah Brightman, the ex-Hot Gossip girl who had a huge hit with 'Starship Trooper'. Notwithstanding that she had fantastic reviews for the Charlie Strouse opera Nightingale at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, everyone was ready to snipe and say that she only got the role of Christine because she was my wife. When in previews she got ill and missed a performance, the chattering started big time. I shudder to think what would have happened if the Net had been around with its malicious and often fake or professional bloggers.

Big opening nights, even when you feel sure you have the public with you, are when you feel most vulnerable, the night that you want your closest loved ones around you. But when your loved one is a woman who is perceived by even some of your closest friends to have broken a marriage and she is playing the leading role in your new musical (having previously been a kitten in the world's then biggest musical, Cats), goodness knows I felt alone and frightened whilst all around were celebrating. I couldn't even bear to sit through the show. Cameron Mackintosh brought me back to the theatre to see the curtain calls.

So when I read the first review, that of the late Jack Tinker of the Daily Mail, in which he said that he could think of no other actress than Sarah who could have premiered the role, frankly I cried. And I had to wake Sarah up to show her. Jack in those days was the most powerful and respected critic of musicals. His continued support for Sarah and the show is one of the things that I will always cherish.

But all of that is 25 years ago. I am struck, when I look at the phenomenon that Phantom became, how perilously small the fine line is between success and failure in musical theatre. What if Maria Bjornson hadn't designed the show? Would another choreographer have understood the period and style as Gillian did, in her brilliantly understated way?

Hal Prince is the master showman of the last four decades of musical theatre. Phantom truly has a huge element of hokum. Would a director who tried to intellectualise the story rather than simply direct it for real have brought the whole fragile edifice crashing down along with the chandelier? And would any other producer than Cameron Mackintosh have had the chutzpah to pull the whole confection into life?

I remember one potential director said to Cameron and me that the opening 'chandelier moment' could never work. I believe that is the most theatrical moment that I have ever conceived, a moment that can only be achieved in live theatre.

Love, passion and live theatre are what Phantom is all about. I am profoundly grateful that my masked balls struck such a deep chord throughout the world. I still get goosebumps every time that chandelier comes alive like some alien spaceship and infuses the theatre with something that only happens when design, direction and music are completely at one.

'The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall' will be available on DVD, Blu Ray, CD and download. Go to www.phantom25th.com for details.]]>