‘Phantom’ sequel ‘Love Never Dies’ comes alive at Smith Center

Most demos capture the composer “noodling at the piano.” Webber, by contrast, went to Abbey Road recording studio in London with “a 90-piece orchestra,” Slater notes. And within 30 seconds of listening, “I said, ‘OK, I am so in.’ ”

Credit “some of the lushest, most gorgeous music I’d ever heard,” which is how Slater describes Webber’s score for “Love Never Dies,” the 10-years-after-“Phantom” musical that opens a virtually sold-out eight-performance run Tuesday at The Smith Center.

Webber specifically wanted an American lyricist for “Love Never Dies” because the musical is set in Coney Island, Slater says, requiring “an American tone and American brashness.”

The composer didn’t view it as a sequel as much as “a second story with these characters,” the lyricist explains.

“These characters” being the mysterious Phantom and his beloved musical muse, Christine Daae, who — in the 10 years following “Phantom of the Opera” has become a celebrated opera diva, the wife of Vicomte Raoul de Vigny (played by Sean Thompson) and the mother of young son Gustave.

“I always wondered what really happened,” says Gardar Thor Cortes, who portrays the Phantom on the current North American tour, reprising the role he previously played in the German production. Audiences also “have been asking for 30 years” what became of Christine and the Phantom, he adds.

Christine is “a working mother — she’s making the money in 1907,” observes Meghan Picerno, who’s making her national tour debut in the role. “Being a working woman comes with its challenges.”

One of them being Christine’s connection to the Phantom, who’s gone to New York — specifically, Coney Island — and found a place where “he fits right in,” Slater notes. “In the original, the Phantom sees himself as ugly. He’s ashamed. He believes the world sees him as a monster.”

At Coney Island, however, “he’s not particularly freakish,” the lyricist adds. “All the values are inverted. Once I figured it out, it was no longer ‘that crazy idea.’ ”

To Cortes, the Phantom “has grown — he is older and, hopefully, wiser,” but “his longing for his love has never diminished.”

Neither has Webber’s desire to bring “Love Never Dies” to the stage.

The initial 2010 London production — with a script by best-selling “Day of the Jackal” author Frederick Forsyth — “wasn’t working the way a musical needs to work,” Slater acknowledges. (That may explain the existence of an active internet campaign, dubbed “Love Should Die,” that characterizes the show as “a non-awaited and ludicrous sequel … that bastardizes the original story.”)

After the musical’s London debut, a revamped 2011 Australian production, headed by director Simon Phillips, “found the key” to making “Love Never Dies” work on stage, Slater says.

Part of the problem with the original: “We had not quite figured out the world the Phantom was in — and who he had become,” Slater says. The Australian version provided “a physical production that captured everything we were trying to do. We said, ‘Yes, you got it right.’ ”

Preview

■ What: “Love Never Dies”

■ When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, with additional performances through March 25

■ Where: Reynolds Hall, The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Ave.

■ Tickets: $49-$127 (if available; thesmithcenter.com)