Il primo musical scritto da Elton John con Bernie si è rivelato probabilmente come il maggior flop nella lunga carriera di Elton.  Infatti, dopo un debutto, con critiche abbastanze negative nell'autunno del  2005, a San Francisco, è approdato a Broadway , al Palace Theatre , il 25 aprile 2006.    Ma dopo sole 33 preview e 39 rapprersentazioni regolari lo spettacolo è stato definitivamente sospeso.   Anche a Broadway, nonostante alcune modifiche dopo il test di San Francisco, le critiche erano state veramente negative e la risposta del pubblico non era stata incoraggiante.    La Warner Bros detentrice dei diritti aveva investito 15 milioni di dollari nell'impresa.   E' tratto da tre racconti di successo della scrittrice Anne Rice (New Orleans, 1941), il primo, Intervista Con Il Vampiro (Interview With The Vampire, 1976), seguito da Scelti Dalle Tenebre (The Vampire Lestat, 1985) e da La Regina Dei Dannati (The Queen of the Damned, 1988), il cui protagonista è il vampiro Lestat de Lioncourt, noti anche come The Vampire Chronicles che in parte sono già stati trasformati in film di successo.   "'Intervista Con Il Vampiro è uno dei miei liberi preferiti e Anne Rice è uno dei miei autori preferiti," aveva già dichiarato Elton in passato. "Sebbene ci sia voluto parecchio tempo per mettere insieme questo progetto, credo fermamente che abbiamo la squadra giusta.Il Vampiro Lestat è il primo musical che ho scritto con Bernie e ciò lo rende molto speciale per me."  Il progetto di un musical tratto dai racconti della Rice risale a molti anni fa, ma per vari motivi non se ne era mai fatto niente.    Anne Rice, dopo aver ascoltato i primi demo: "Ne ho ascoltate alcune interpretate da Elton John grazie a un CD che mi ha inviato, ed erano perfettamente corrispondenti al più profondo messaggio dei romanzi, coglievano perfettamente il significato dell'oscurità dei miei libri… erano splendide.  Ho avuto la possibilità di discutere personalmente con Elton John e con Rob Roth, il regista, e l'intero progetto mi ha elettrizzata".  Elton ha composto musica per orchestra di stampo classico, e infatti ha dichiarato: "Non vedo come potesse entrarci la musica moderna senza suonare ridicola, quando ho visto le parole scritte da Bernie, ho pensato che non potesse essere assolutamente un'opera rock. Doveva essere classica: queste sono musiche complesse, complicate".  Bernie, dal canto suo ha dichiarato: "assegneremo al vampiro un aspetto più umano.  Non sarà tutto croci e tombe.  Sarà uno spettacolo cupo, ma sexy.  Niente clichè, niente eccessi gotici".   La sceneggiatura è di Linda Woolverton già autrice pluripremiata della versione teatrale di The Lion King e Aida.  Dopo la sospensione a Broadway il destino del musical se non è già segnato, è sicuramente messo in forte dubbio perchè è difficile pensare che possa essere rappresentato in altre piazze importanti, come può essere Londra.  E' una produzione molto costosa ed è probabile che venga abbandonata al proprio destino, anche perchè Elton preferirà dimenticare e cancellare dalla memoria un insuccesso di queste proporzioni.  Resta da vedere se ci saranno conseguenze per il futuro artistico di Elton, dopo che anche l'album Peachtree Road aveva ottenuto delle vendite mondiali molto scarse.  Nel maggio 2006 il cast ha registrato l'album che doveva essere disponibile nel successivo luglio, ma il progetto è stato bloccato e per il momento non è ancora arrivato sul mercato.

Supportiamo il cast di Lestat affinchè venga pubblicato il disco!

"The only project on my agenda presently aside from my art (new exhibition
later in the year) is Lestat with which I am over the moon. It is without a
doubt one of the most thrilling projects I have ever been involved with, and
something that I truly believe is going to go down as one of our greatest
achievements. I'm so very proud of everything we have achieved so far: the
songs are simply amazing, the book has a depth and poetry far beyond the
usual lame Broadway stereotype and all this married to a production that is
both revolutionary and groundbreaking. It is in my mind above and beyond
what people may expect from this material. The best part of all is that it
is our show, which means I get to work in every facet of its development
from casting to every angle of the production. Beginning next year it will
start to take over my life completely - and I can't wait."
Bernie Taupin
 
 

LESTAT ON BROADWAY: In a word: magnificent!        

The New York premiere of LESTAT was April 25th, 2006.

I’m overjoyed to report that I was there on opening night, stunned and amazed, and I’m eager to tell you just exactly what I saw.

But let me say this first:  I didn’t really create the character of Lestat de Lioncourt.  He lives and breathes in some nine different books that I wrote.  But how he came to be is truly something I can’t explain.

So if I write here about Lestat as if he was somebody else’s baby, there’s a reason for it.  He’s been out there on his own from the start.

Yes, he was based on my husband Stan -- on Stan’s vigor and beauty, on Stan’s will and Stan’s courage.  And  my son, Christopher, has grown up to be Lestat, and that’s a puzzle that commands respect.

Yet Lestat is my alter ego, lover, muse and the unabashed hero of my crippled, genderless soul.  I’m in love with the guy. I prowl the world looking through his eyes from time to time.  For decades, there was nothing I couldn’t express through Lestat’s voice.

So when  a production captures Lestat perfectly as this unique and thoroughly original musical by Elton John and Bernie Taupin has done,  well, I can’t mumble about it, feigning humility.   That would be pointless. I’m too enchanted, too intoxicated, too frankly thrilled.

Now back to what happened on the stage of the Palace Theater in New York last week.

After years of anticipation on my part, I saw the curtain rise, and who should be there but my hero,  complete and entire from the first second, so fully realized that I am on the verge of tears. Hugh Panaro was a giant as he moved around the stage with the grace of a panther. His voice was lustrous and immense as he sang Elton John’s rich, melodic and truly glorious music.  Bernie Taupin’s brilliant lyrics got right to the point.  In essence, Lestat put it out there:  I’m young, I’m strong, I’m you! --  and I’m gonna die!

Why do I say this when my hero is an immortal? When the “theme” of the musical is that he will live forever?  Because we are all both mortal and immortal, creatures locked in time, yet conceiving of eternity, and that is what the play was most certainly about.

I knew instantly the production was a triumph; and to the final curtain it never let me down.  In those first few moments there was an explosion: here was the bravery, the skill, the power -- to deliver a true adaptation of something I’d somehow managed to unearth in my long and frantic excavations of the mind.

Effortlessly and briskly the musical moved the hero into the presence of Carolee Carmello as Gabrielle, Lestat’s mother, and with astonishing power this actress worked a curious miracle, wringing a depth  from that character which was beyond what I myself had ever understood.  Yet this was Gabrielle -- and this was Gabrielle and Lestat together. At once they   transcended the mother and son bond; the alchemy of metaphor  was unleashing a muted fury.  These were any two people who had loved each other unselfishly and yet with total and consuming need.  The heat was white. The audience was spellbound. You could feel the exhilaration in the theater.  The great bursts of applause had begun.

And we were traveling swiftly into an alternative world in which our most pedestrian concerns and our greatest anguish could be confessed and examined to their very roots.

The night went on like that, with surprise after surprise, depths yielding to depths, with members of the audience often in tears.

Roderick Hill was vulnerable, seductive and heartbreaking as Lestat’s boyhood friend Nicolas.  Allison Fischer brought down the house as the child Vampire Claudia, a woman trapped forever in a little girl’s body, unschooled in compassion, yet steeped in pain. Jim Stanek was the embodiment of Lestat’s tragic grief-stricken partner, Louis. As the arch antagonist, the Satan of Lestat’s trials, Drew Sarich  was  deeply engaging  and  mystifyingly sympathetic.  Marius, the ancient one, came  to quiet strength in the person of Michael Genet, offering Lestat wisdom instead of despair.

Every voice in the ensemble was tremendous, flexible and shamelessly gorgeous;  song after lovely song  broke forth. The  plot, direction, story, and staging all moved with irresistible timing thanks to the genius of Rob Roth and Linda Woolverton -- until we were at last awakened by the final curtain from a hypnotic spell.  I didn’t want this to end. I wanted to be with my beloved Lestat. A celebratory joy had gripped the theater.  I’d witnessed a triumph all right.  It was one of the happiest nights of my entire life.

Of course the entire concept of the musical is romantic in  the finest sense of that word. It’s deliberately over the top.  

Lestat is the essence of the romantic man of sensibility, privileging his insight and his will to survive   over the voices of authority that would relegate him to the realm of the damned. In him, the vampire is a metaphor for the outsider in all of us, the predator in all of us, the alienated one and the rebellious  one, the being who  wants to live forever and yet be held tightly in some one’s loving and forgiving arms.

The show is about redemption because the characters won’t give up on it.  It’s about transcending in any way that you can. 

To create a musical this pure and this  committed to the big questions is to fly in the face of the weary world at every turn.

How dare you talk frankly about good and evil in an operatic context, one might ask. How dare you mention the name of God?  How dare you present characters who care whether or not God exists and what He thinks about us and our suffering?  And above all, how dare you affirm that heroes can and do rise to articulate our worst fears and our strongest longings?  How dare you do all this in a consummately entertaining and frankly beautiful piece of work? 

LESTAT makes no concessions whatsoever to cynicism, irony, or camp. The ambition and the achievement  are enormous here. The character and the play reach directly for the heart of the audience and will settle for nothing less.

Is it any wonder that every song is a show stopper? That cries accompany the exuberant clapping over and over again?  That standing ovations greet the final bows?   You leave the theater grateful for the nerve that went into this work knowing that you will never be able to fully  analyze how and why these strange, eccentric and extreme characters changed  your soul.

It’s a long road from Epidaurus to the Palace Theater. New dramatic forms have dazzled us and will continue to do so.  But only the stage can make the magic I saw in LESTAT.  Only living human beings coming together for a certain uninterrupted span of time in which they act, and sing, and pour their hearts out, can achieve this wondrous feat. 

That’s what I saw and  felt on Tuesday April 25th, 2006 at the premiere of this musical.  There’s no doubt in my mind that readers far and wide will love it and embrace it,  no doubt that Lestat has moved from literature to legend in a  divine theatrical incarnation in my own time.

PRESS RELEASE

Questo è il team che ha prodotto LESTAT:

ANNE RICE  - autrice dei libri da cui il musical è ricavato(

ELTON JOHN - musica

BERNIE TAUPIN - testi

LINDA WOOLVERTON - sceneggiatura

ROBERT JESS ROTH - regia

MATT WEST - musical staging

DEREK McLANE - coerografia

SUSAN HILFERTY - costumi

KENNETH POSNER - lighting designer

JONATHAN DEANS - sound design

DAVE McKEAN - visual concept design

TOM WATSON - acconciature

RICK SORDELET - fight director

TODD ELLISON - arrangiamenti vocali

GUY BABYLON - supervisione musicale/orchestrazione

STEVE MARGOSHES - orchestrazione

BRAD HAAK - direzione musicale/arrangiamenti

JOHN MILLER - coordinamento musicale

HOWARD WERNER/LIGHTSWITCH - coordinamento del progetto

JAY BINDER, CSA/MARK BRANDON - casting

BONNIE L. BECKER - production stage manager

J. PHILIP BASSETT - stage manager

KIMBERLY RUSSELL - assistant stage manager

SAM SCALAMONI - direttore associato

CYNTHIA ONRUBIA - associate musical stager

ALAN WASSER - organizzazione generale

JUNIPER STREET PRODUCTIONS - supervisione tecnica

GREGG MADAY/WARNER BROS. THEATRE VENTURES - produzione

IL CAST PER IL MUSICAL DI ELTON JOHN "LESTAT"
Questo era il cast del  musical scritto da Elton John "Lestat", che ha debuttato il 27 dicembre 2005 a San Francisco, prima dell'arrivo a Broadway. Il ruolo del protagonista è stato affidato a Hugh Panaro, conosciuto per la sua interpretazione del "Phantom of the Opera" a Broadway. Con lui Carolee Carmello (star di Mamma Mia!), Jack Noseworthy, Jim Stanek, Roderick Hill, Michael Genet e Allison Fisch. Il musical è ispirato ai romanzi di Ann Rice (Intervista col vampiro, Lestat il vampiro). Lo show era prodotto dalla Warner Bros che faceva così il suo ingresso anche nel mondo del teatro. Le parole sulle musiche di Elton John sono state scritte dal suo coautore "storico" Bernie Taupin. Il Libretto è di Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast, Aida), la regia di Robert Jess Roth (Beauty and the Beast).