Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lyrics by Charles Hart, with additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe. Libretto by Andrew Lloyd Webber & Richard Stilgoe. Based on the novel by Gaston Leroux. Opera Australia. Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour. 27 Mar – 3 May, 2026.
The Phantom of the Opera is back on Sydney Harbour. After a triumphant, if rainy, debut in 2022, the Handa Opera production has been restaged with a new lead cast. And when it comes to the synthesis of opera and musicals – you don’t get better than this.
Aspiring soprano Christine (Amy Manford) is stuck in the chorus with her best friend Meg (Jayme Jo Massoud), but strange things are happening. Christine barely leaves the opera house anymore and has found a new singing tutor who is so determined to see her succeed, he is ready to murder anyone who stands in her way. But when her literally entitled childhood sweetheart Raoul, Vicomte De Chagny (Jarrod Draper), who is both super-hot and super-rich, appears offering to take her away from the bitchy world of the opera, she is ready to chuck it all in. Her masked, incel of a teacher, the Phantom (Jake Lyle), may be talented, but is getting a lead role really worth the price of putting up with a creep?
The plot hasn’t aged especially well, and it takes a generous dose of wilful disbelief to get past the clunky transitions — but you don’t come to this event-sized show for subtlety. You come for grandeur and 9pm fireworks.
With a cast of nearly 50, this is a scale of production you rarely see, with a score extravagant enough to fill the harbour. When the ensemble and orchestra peak in “Masquerade” at the top of Act Two, fireworks timed to the beats with the Harbour Bridge and city lights behind them, it’s simply transcendent — a Sydney-only spectacle you can’t replicate.
In this open-air environment you trade nuance for spectacle. Emotions are telegraphed to the… well, I was going to say “the cheap seats,” but in this case it’s “the fractionally less expensive seats.” The Phantom comes across as a petulant teenager more often than not — the psycho-sexual daddy-vibes of traditional productions replaced by a toxically possessive love triangle and a lot of hurling himself to the ground screaming “Christiiiiiinnne!”
Other trade-offs are unavoidable. The slow-moving sets create pacing lags, the tricky acoustics render the counter-melodies in “Prima Donna” completely incomprehensible, and the chandelier looks less like a life-threatening accident than someone installing faulty Philips Hue bulbs. But as you stare at Gabriela Tylesova’s stunning gothic set, framed by the modern architectural lines & lights of the city, all those theatrical sins are easily forgiven.
Amy Manford is in fine voice and has perfected a flamboyant cape flip. Jarrod Draper cuts a genuinely heroic figure as Raoul. Jake Lyle brings a callow energy to the Phantom that I initially questioned as too youthful, but by Act Two he’d fully won me over. And as always, the best role in Phantom is Carlotta — Giuseppina Grech is having an absolute blast, though I wish her “frog” croak hadn’t been so obviously goosed by sound effects.
Of all the Handa Opera productions — and West Side Story and Guys & Dolls were both a blast — The Phantom of the Opera is the one that truly nails the format, because it was always built for exactly this kind of glorious excess. Give it a harbour, a bridge, and a pyrotechnics budget, and suddenly the melodrama feels completely natural. Even the dramatic opening-night winds, which made the chandelier feel genuinely perilous for once, only added to the spectacle.
Which is all to say: yes, it’s a bit silly. Emotionally indulgent, overblown, and gloriously ridiculous. Dress up, grab a glass of bubbly and settle in – this is exactly as magnificent as pop-opera should be.
Cultural Binge 
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