MOSCOW, October 21 (RIA Novosti) - Tickets for the Russian production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera have sold out through the end of the year, a spokesman from the production company Stage Entertainment Russia told Russian news site Lenta.ru.
With 150,000 tickets sold in the first two weeks, promoters have said that this is an absolute record in the history of stage entertainment in Russia.
As a result of high demand, scalpers are now reselling tickets for up to 10,000 rubles (over $240). Organizers, noting their desire to see that everyone gets a chance to see the spectacle at a reasonable price, have said that they will begin selling tickets for shows into the new year ahead of schedule.
Phantom of the Opera, originally a novel written by Gaston Leroux in 1910, was turned into a hit musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1986, and became one of the most successful and longest-running projects in the history of Broadway and London’s West End Theatre.
The musical’s Moscow premier occurred October 4, 2014. With a production cost of nearly $10 million dollars, the show is one of the most expensive in the history of Russian theater. The Moscow Palace of Youth was reconstructed specifically in anticipation of the event.
