With over three record-breaking decades on Broadway–it’s safe to say, Andrew Lloyd Webber, the late director Hal Prince, producer Cameron Mackintosh and the entire original “Phantom of the Opera” company captured lighting in a bottle.

In a sit-down interview with Frank DiLella, the composer Lloyd Webber said, “I see some of the things or the comments that the young who are coming to ‘Phantom’ now are saying, and one of the things that they say is that they’ve never seen anything like it. ‘Phantom’ is something different. And one of the things that I wonder is whether there will be a production like a ‘Phantom’ again, you know, of that scale. I think its gotta be questionable whether anybody would be able to afford a nearly 30-piece orchestra.”

DiLella asked Andrew how many times he had seen “Phantom,” over the years, “Gosh, I’ve lost count — laugh. It’s probably not as much as you might think, but it’s gotta be obviously in over a hundred, I would say. Yeah. But the interesting thing now, of course, is to see it in other languages and other places. I mean, there’s an Italian production coming up, which is going to be an original one. I think it’s in the summer. 

To Frank DiLella’s question about what would be going through his mind when the last chandelier of “Phantom” falls on Broadway, Andrew replied, “Well, I should be very, very sad. I mean, you know, I’ve even wondered whether or not I could actually face going to the final performance, to be frank. And I might not. But what’s really sad about it is it’s not necessary. It could easily, easily run on now, but, again, it’s not my decision. I will also be very conscious if I do go and that chandelier will fall for the last time in the middle of the, well, the end of the first act, that it will rise again somewhere in New York–much sooner than people might think.”