The ‘Phantom’ facts

• Played to over 130 million people in 27 countries in 145 cities around the world with an estimated gross of $5.6 billion worldwide.   The box office revenues are higher than any film or stage play in history, including Titanic, ET, Star Wars and Avatar.

• Played for almost 25 years and over 10,000 performances at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London

• Played in 13 different languages: English, French, German, Japanese, Danish, Polish, Swedish, Castilian, Hungarian, Dutch, Korean, Portuguese, Mexican Spanish

• Won over 60 major theatre awards including 3 Olivier Awards, an Evening Standard Award, 7 Tony Awards including Best Musical, 7 Drama Desk Awards and 5 Outer Critic Circle Awards.

• Original cast recording was the first in British musical history to enter the charts at number one.  Album sales now exceed 40 million worldwide.

• On 9 January 2006 the New York production overtook Cats to become the longest running show in Broadway history with its 7,486^th performance.

• The dazzling replica of the Paris Opera House chandelier is made up of 6,000 beads consisting of 35 beads to each string.  It is 3 metres wide and weighs one ton.  The touring version falls at 2.5 metres per second.  The original version was built by 5 people in 4 weeks.

• The Phantom’s make-up takes 2 hours to put on and 30 minutes to take off.  The face is moisturised, closely shaved and the prosthetics are fitted, setting immediately, before 2 wigs, 2 radio microphones and 2 contact lenses (one white and one clouded) are placed.

• 2,230 metres of fabric are used for the drapes, 900 of them specially dyed.  The tasselled fringes measure 226 metres.  They are made up of 250 kilos of dyed wool interwoven with 5,000 wooden beads imported from India.  Each one is handmade and combed through with an Afro comb.

• There are 130 cast, crew and orchestra members directly involved in each performance.

• Each performance has 230 costumes, 14 dressers, 120 automated cues, 22 scene changes, 281 candles and uses 250 kg of dry ice and 10 fog and smoke machines.

• The touring production takes 27 articulated lorries to transfer the set between theaters September 2011 (advt)