Music / Phantom of the Opera, Handa Opera, On Sydney Harbour, until May 3. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

At the risk of sounding obvious, Phantom of the Opera is the most operatic of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s theatrical creations, a homage to his own classical music heritage.

With its larger-than-life protagonist, rendered human by Lloyd Webber and lyricists Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe, the musical takes The Phantom of the Opera and a swag of melodramatic film adaptations, and makes its characters human.

Much of Phantom is a parody of the operatic form, with scenes from fictional operas about Hannibal and Don Juan. Yet taking the further step of staging it away from an opera house, outdoors in a large-scale setting, was always going to be a brilliant move.

There are few musicals in the repertoire so well suited to the dramatic staging offered by Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, and this one lives up to the hype.

There are many moving parts to this production. Designer Gabriela Tylesova’s extraordinary set conjures the worn-down remnants of a late 19th-century opera house, while her highly theatrical costumes contribute to a slightly off-centre feeling about the very art form on which this musical is based, so that the ballet tutus are classical, but also quirky.

Choreographer Simone Sault adds to this off-centre tone with movements for the corps de ballet that are almost, but not quite, classical.

Simon Phillips’ powerful production lingers briefly on an opening auction at a Parisian opera house before plunging into the flashback that forms the rest of the show. This centres on the familiar story of the disfigured genius who dwells as a menacing presence in the bowels of an opera house, or, as Phillips puts it, the Phantom’s “Stygian underworld”.

This nether world is magnificently realised by Gabriela Tylesova, aided by lighting from Nick Schlieper, along with striking uses of fire and water.

The quality of the performances is uniformly high. Debora Krizak, as the formidable Madame Giry, deepens the sense of something we don’t quite understand; Giuseppina Grech, as the diva Madame Carlotta, draws bravos for her high notes, and Jarrod Draper, as the Phantom’s rival in love, Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny, enhances the production’s glorious melodrama.

The impressive orchestra, directed by Guy Simpson, runs the gamut of operatic styles, from delicate to grand, with special mention due to the keyboard players, Kevin Wang, Dominica Woodhead and Nicholas Till, who convey the sinister Phantom motif.

In the end, however, the main sources of dramatic excitement are clear. The two central performers, Amy Manford as Christine and Jake Lyle as the Phantom, hold the audience from the outset with the complexity of their performances, so that some audience members around me wondered that Christine didn’t end up with the Phantom instead of Raoul.

Lyle, an extraordinarily young Phantom with credentials from the Queensland Conservatorium, balances the character’s murderous impulses with the sensitivity of a brilliant musician with a yearning heart.

But it is Manford who, to my mind, steals the show from the outset, investing the role of Christine, originally written by Lloyd Webber for Sarah Brightman, with both delicacy and power.