Phantom Of The Opera

Andrew Lloyd Webber has reigned over musical theatre for nearly five decades and delighted millions worldwide with hit shows like Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Aspects of Love and, most recently, School of Rock the Musical. To mark his 70th year, Lloyd Webber has written an autobiography - Unmasked, a candid and confessional account of his early life and career up to the opening of Phantom. In this imagine special, Alan Yentob talks to Andrew about the book, his bohemian childhood and the memories he's chosen to reveal.

Gabrielle (Helene Hallier), an ambitious but innocent would-be young chorine, trumps a music hall publicity stunt to become the new Parisian nightclub Cinderella. But this lighter-than-champagne-bubbles story is only a pretext for LA REVUE DES REVUES's white-hot, non-stop procession of outrageously and scantily attired exotic dancers, showgirls, and acrobats including the Tiller¹s Follies Girls, Ruth Zackey and the Hoffmann Girls, and danseuse russe Lila Nikolska. But it's Josephine Baker, "the high priestess of primitivism" (J. Hoberman Village Voice), who triumphs in two show stopping numbers in which "her clownish backfield-in-motion Charleston shimmy is unlike anything else in the movie and perhaps unlike anything anyone ever did."

What are Notre Dame's gargoyles guarding? What do five ordinary flagstones have to do with one of the most notorious killing machines ever created? What is the Phantom of the Opera's connection to a statue on the Seine? Paris has one of the richest and most exciting histories of any city in the world but some of its most fascinating stories have been lost to the ages. Enjoy this one-of-a-kind tour as we reveal its many secrets, hiding in catacombs and cathedrals, sidewalks and cemeteries, and along its famous river.

A profile of the actor and entertainer, whose career has taken him from appearing with Barbra Streisand in movie musical Hello Dolly, to the West End as the star of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, and his creation of sitcom legend Frank Spencer in Some Mother's Do 'Ave 'Em. With contributions by Michele Dotrice, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Arlene Phillips, Bill Kenwright and Maria Friedman.

An opera ballet that doesn't exist. A ghost-like piece, played in Opera Bastille and danced at Opera Garnier, An almost mystical link between both scenes, A musician is testing sounds in Bastille's pit, The choir are taking their place in the rehearsal studio, Both sides are fine tuning the work in progress of an opera ballet : SARAH WINCHESTER, her grief, her madness, her home and her ghosts.