[MrsJemimaMistoffelees]

Student musical won't see the light
Mohonasen High cancels "Phantom of the Opera" production it hadn't secured rights to perform
By Anne Miller

ROTTERDAM -- Like shadows across an opera house stage when the lights go on, the Mohonasen High School musical production of "The Phantom of the Opera" has disappeared.

The show, scheduled for this weekend, most definitely will not go on. It was canceled last week, right before tickets were to go on sale, after the musical's licensing company got word of the production.

Those in need of a "Phantom" fix can still buy tickets for a monthlong run at Proctor's Theatre in February, said theater CEO Philip Morris. Morris said he had not heard of the high school performance. His theater booked the licensed national touring company months ago.

An amateur preview, however, became out of the question after the company that licenses the musical copyright told the high school to cease and desist. Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber gives only national touring companies the rights to perform the work.

"We ask monthly if we can get the rights" to distribute the musical, said Steve Spiegel, director of licensing for Rodgers and Hammerstein Theatricals, which handles the American and Canadian copyrights for the show.

"We thought we were going to get the musical rights, and that fell through," said Mary Prusak, spokeswoman for the Mohonasen Central School District.

Gaston Leroux's French novel, first published in 1910, is about a young opera singer in Paris who is haunted by a mysterious, disfigured man who lurks beneath the opera house and wears a mask.

Webber's musical version opened in London in 1986. It moved to Broadway in 1988 and is the longest-running show there today.

Mohonasen theater director Margaret Gray secured the rights to a dramatic version of the haunting tale for $278 from the Eldridge Publishing Company, Prusak said. The show was scheduled for performances Thursday through Sunday.

The 35 students involved wanted to perform the musical version. So, for the past few weeks, the teens practiced.

They advertised their semiannual production on the school's Web site, which is how the New York City licensing company learned of it. Clipping services and Web search engines check daily to ensure no one violates the copyright, Spiegel said.

A representative from Spiegel's company called the high school last week. Spiegel said the principal understood and immediately stopped the production.

The school district, under instructions from Superintendent Kathleen Spring, had little to say, Prusak said.

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=419643&category=SCHENECTADY&BCCode=LOCAL&newsdate=11/15/2005

Fools...

Veel Liefs,
Jemima