Since Weber's masterpiece "Cat" was first introduced to China in 2003, "Phantom of the Theatre", "Evita", "Sunday Love", "School of Rock" have been staged one after another, setting off a boom in performances, not to mention the influence of those classic songs, such as "Memories" and "Argentina Don't Cry for Me".
In March 2018, Weber released an English version of his autobiography on the occasion of his 70th birthday. After three years of polishing, the Chinese edition of Weber's Autobiography: Genius and Ecstasy After the Mask recently met with Chinese readers. The English title of this autobiography draws on the iconic elements of Weber's masterpiece "The Phantom of the Theatre", and hits the hearts of musical theater lovers with a pun on unmasked (taking off the mask), making people wonder if the phantom behind the mask is his inner hidden self.
Fei Xiang, a star who starred in Weber's musicals, wrote: "Reading Sir Weber's autobiography feels like attending a feast, subverting all imaginations one by one. ”
Born into an artistic family, destined for theatrical talent
Andrew Lloyd Weber was born into a musical family. His father was a composer, and Weber's mother, who opened a well-known piano school in London, was what Weber called "a first-class piano teacher for children". Compared with his father, who can understand and support his artistic pursuits and life choices, his mother is a "tiger mother" who hopes to become a dragon. And his closest aunt "Aunt Wei", who has not only acted in dramas, but also led him into the theater circle and is his spiritual guide.
Growing up in an artistic setting, Weber's memoirs reveal his special and interesting family. His younger brother who later became a cellist and his brother's classmate, John Lear, the pianist who won the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, added a lot of color to his childhood. His family habit of regularly visiting the Palladium Theatre in London made him interested in stage performances, and even made a toy theater himself, and together with his brother planned many performances for this "theater".
The master's adolescence was also rebellious
Despite growing up in an enviable artistic family, Weber still had a lot of pressure and distress. He could not meet his mother's expectations for his artistic achievements; after entering the campus, he was not fit for the group because he was below the normal school age; he worked hard to complete his schoolwork and was admitted to the Oxford University School of History, but he could not give up his instinctive love for music, and spent a lot of energy on artistic creation, so he was forced to suspend by the school... This "rebellious youth" finally made a key stroke of his life with a decision: to drop out of Oxford University for the musical!
Although he did not know what the road ahead was when he made the decision to drop out of school, which his family saw as a "self-destructive future", his love of musicals made him firmly run to this path and never looked back.
From Cats to Phantom of the Theatre, create highlight moments on the musical stage
In this memoir, Weber spends a lot of time telling the creative process of those classic works, from "Joseph and the Magic Dress" to "The Stars of the World", from "Evita" to "Sunday Love", from "Cats" to "The Phantom of the Theater"... Readers will see the creative process of a musical from scratch.
He carefully reviewed how "Memories", which touched countless heartstrings, was written; how the casting process of Elaine Peggy, the first version of "Evita" who starred in the first generation of Mrs. Perón; the circumstances in which the world-wide "Argentina Don't Cry for Me" was conceived; and the first draft of "Phantom of the Theatre", people can't help but marvel at how the first draft of this classic work was so completed in one go, almost indistinguishable from today's performance on stage.
Those who made Weber
Weber, who has been immersed in the art world for most of his life, is also an important review of the history of British and American musical theater, which not only shows glamorous successes, but also depressing failures, and the big names in the theater and music worlds in the book have appeared... There are also a number of actors who are active on the stage of contemporary musical theater, showing us the colorful life of showbiz.
His three marriages, his emotional entanglement with Sarah Brightman, were also included in the book: his first wife had just turned 18 when he married him, and his current wife, Madeleine, was the most powerful helper in his career. These characters in life, together with Weber, perform his wonderful dramatic life.
A box office miracle, a double legend of art and business
Weber's musical theatre productions are not only artistically attractive, but also commercially unsurpassable. Cats, which has been performed in London's West End for 21 consecutive years and on Broadway in New York for 18 consecutive years, and Phantom of the Theatre, which celebrated its 30th birthday in London in 2016, also broke the record for Cats and became the longest-running play on Broadway, having been performed in 166 theatres around the world and is still performed worldwide.
According to statistics, so far he has won a total of 8 Tony Awards, 4 Grammy Awards, 7 Oliver Awards, 1 Golden Globe Award, 1 Oscar, 2 International Emmy Awards, etc., and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2018 Tony Awards ceremony.
The "really good" company he founded under the name of Thomas Locomotive has now grown into a huge cultural performance group. At the same time, he already owns seven theaters under his name, and his childhood dreams shine into reality, and the children's games in the toy theater transform into every starry theater night.
Editor/Bow Lifang