Are ye right there, Michael?

You may talk of Columbus a-sailin'

Across the Atlantical sea. . .

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Sore Ears

It's a good story, but would be much better without the music. If you can call it music. Today, PBS showed Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom Of the Opera," a 2011 performance at the Royal Albert. A minor (or off-) key, shrieking nightmare. A gruelling, harrowing three and a half hours of cacophony. The only reason I watched it was because it was there.

Seriously, over the years I have suffered through several other performances of "Phantom Of the Opera," trying to recapture some of the magic I found in the 1990 miniseries starring Charles Dance, Toni Polo and Burt Lancaster, produced by Tony Richardson. But none of them were quite as distressing as Webber's.

In fact, one production (starring Claude Raines) was pretty good. Quieter.

So now I've seen/heard enough of the thing to convince me that the 1990 one was the only one I liked.