I went to Trieste last week, a place I’d never actually heard of until Phantom of the Opera announced a production was opening there and I was intrigued. It had a strangely stacked cast for such a random location (Ramin Karimloo! Bradley Jaden! Earl Carpenter!) and when I found out that Ramin Karimloo was going to be reprising his role as the Phantom, I knew I had to go! He was my first ever Phantom when I first saw the show in 2008, and I also saw him in Love Never Dies (but the less said about that the better). I was even more intrigued when I discovered that it was going to a be non-replica production and apparently the Phantom would be riding the chandelier as it dropped at the end of Act 1. I'd honestly never even heard of Trieste before, but I really regret not going to see it in Oslo as that production still looks incredible to me so I figured I'd book it and see what happened. After all, that's what I did for New York and that worked out!
I was in Trieste for 3 days, and it was OK. There wasn’t really a whole lot to do in the city that didn’t require an entry fee (even the beach! Even the bathroom!!) and I was determined not to spend a lot, so I didn’t really end up doing much and felt like I was just waiting to go to the theatre and then waiting to go home. My trip also coincided with the current heatwave that’s happening in central Europe (some temperatures in Italy are reaching 49°C/120°F) so that made me pretty miserable too - I’m a cold weather autumnal girlie. I also just found myself feeling very anxious and depressed on this trip for no real reason which wasn't fun, but I struggled last time I went to Italy too in 2018 and it ended up being a turning point for me and I went on to have the best year of my life afterwards, so maybe having a mental breakdown in Italy is just something I need to do now and then for my health.
The show though!! It was incredible! I’m so glad I went! I'd read comments of it "looking cheap" so I didn't have very high hopes, but I found that to be completely untrue. I loved the set, it was a rotating stage and the main set was a stage/mini theatre (you can see what I mean here) and it rotated depending on whether the scene was taking place on stage or backstage which gave it a really great sense of it taking place within a theatre. During the Overture as the chandelier rose the stage kept rotating and kind of "wound the clock back" and showed key scenes from the musical in reverse until it got to Hannibal which looked incredible. I really loved the costumes too - especially the Phantom's, controversial opinion but I actually don't like his original costume at all and think it's aged horribly. In this it felt more historically accurate, but with some added gothic drama by lining his cloak with red. All of the costumes felt really historically accurate, including Masquerade which I didn't like at first as it felt kind of plain as they were just all wearing cloaks, but then I realized it was a traditional Venetian Masquerade rather than the usual fancy dress party and I liked that so much, especially as it was in Italy.
I liked the choices they'd made with some of the characterizations too - Christine is rapturous when the Phantom first appears in the mirror, but when she realizes he's just a man living in a basement she's visibly afraid and looking for a way to escape and the Phantom literally drugs her during Music of the Night to make her euphoric again so she'll let him touch her. Why Have You Brought Me Here/All I Ask Of You was Christine feeling so desperate she's about to throw herself off of the roof of the Opera Populaire and Raoul has to talk her down from it, and I loved that so much. Not only does it give their relationship some much needed depth, Christine contemplating suicide is in the original novel and it perfectly illustrated how traumatized she was by the whole experience. Overall the mood felt a lot more like the book than the high romance of the musical, and I really loved that! During the Final Lair scene Raoul comes on stage dripping wet because he's just swum through the lake and I'm obsessed with that level of detail. I don't know how they did it either as Raoul was shirtless and not wearing a harness, but the Phantom actually hanged him, Raoul was in midair from his neck for most of the scene. And at the very end just before the mob arrives they had Madame Giry find the Phantom just before he disappears, and that was just such a perfect full circle moment for the plot - she saw how far he'd fallen and how desperate he was, and made one last ditch attempt to help him by misdirecting the police at the last minute (it makes so much more sense than Meg finding him!). The managers also burned the theatre down after Don Juan (not literally, obviously), and it just felt like every character had an ending, whereas in the original they just disappear when they’re not relevant anymore.
There were some questionable moments (I didn't like the chandelier falling! The Phantom does "ride" it, but it's over the stage not the audience and it's very anti-climatic as it just swings a bit while the set around it moves to signify it falling) but overall I wouldn't be mad if this one replaced the original entirely quite honestly. Although I love Phantom of the Opera, I’m not a purest either and I’m happy to see it get updated as time goes on. I ended up seeing it twice as I got a last minute ticket for the day I arrived in Trieste, and I'm really glad I did that. It meant I was really far away the first night, but there were some things I couldn't see as well closer up so it gave me a better perspective of the whole thing.
