25 October 1986
During my Paris years I went to the Opera a couple of times, but I never saw any phantoms there. West End musicals: don’t trust them! If you’ve visited Paris you may have taken in the sight of the Opéra Garnier, to give it its proper name, looming in opulence like an oversized wedding cake. That sort of OTT sickliness is a good representation of this ghastly song from The Phantom Of The Opera, set inside it.
Here’s Cliff, simpering like a mild-mannered primary school teacher, and Sarah Brightman, whose piercing soprano tone could engrave glass. Were ever two duettists more mismatched? The green-screen video (below) is even more hideous, as our two putative lovers are tasked with classic performative romantic gestures like spinning hand in hand, one jumping into the arms of the other, and sharing a particularly icky bit of kissing. Brightman’s most recent newsworthy venture was her unrealised plan in 2014 to visit the International Space Station as a ‘space tourist’. That literal distance between her and Cliff back on Earth would have been a good representation of the figurative distance between them here, and the recommended distance between you and this record.
