Lloyd Webber, Sir Andrew

Lloyd Webber, Sir Andrew, tremendously successful English composer, brother of Julian Lloyd Webber; b. London, March 22, 1948. His father, William Southcombe Lloyd Webber, was the director of the London Coll. of Music and his mother was a piano teacher. Inspired and conditioned by such an environment, Lloyd Webber learned to play piano, violin, and horn, and soon began to improvise music, mostly in the style of American musicals. He attended Westminster School in London, then went to Magdalen Coll., Oxford, the Guildhall School of Music in London, and the Royal Coll. of Music in London. In college he wrote his first musical, The Likes of Us, dealing with a philanthropist. In 1967, at the age of 19, he composed the theatrical show Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which was performed at St. Paul’s Junior School in London in 1968; it was later expanded to a full-scale production (Edinburgh, Aug. 21, 1972), and achieved considerable success for its amalgam of a biblical subject with rock music, French chansonnettes, and country-western songs. In 1970 it was produced in America and in 1972 was shown on television. He achieved his first commercial success with Jesus Christ Superstar, an audacious treatment of the religious theme in terms of jazz and rock. It was premiered in London on Aug. 9, 1972, and ran for 3,357 performances; it was as successful in America. Interestingly enough, the “rock opera,” as it was called, was first released as a record album, which eventually sold 3 million copies. Jesus Christ Superstar opened on Broadway on Oct. 12, 1971, even before the London production. There were protests by religious groups against the irreverent treatment of a sacred subject; particularly offensive was the suggestion in the play of a carnal relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalen; Jewish organizations, on the other hand, protested against the implied portrayal of the Jews as guilty of the death of Christ. The musical closed on Broadway on June 30, 1973, after 720 performances; it received 7 Tony awards. In 1981 the recording of Jesus Christ Superstar was given the Grammy Award for best cast show album of the year. The great hullabaloo about the musical made a certainty of his further successes. His early musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was revived at the Off-Broadway Entermedia Theatre in N.Y.’s East Village on Nov. 18,1981, and from there moved to the Royale Theater on Broadway. In the meantime, he produced a musical with a totally different chief character, Evita, a semi-fictional account of the career of the first wife of Argentine dictator Juan Perón; it was first staged in London on June 21, 1978; a N.Y. performance soon followed, with splendid success. It was followed by the spectacularly successful Cats, inspired by T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats; it was premiered in London on May 11, 1981, and was brought out in N.Y. in Oct. 1982 with fantastic success; Evita and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat were still playing on Broadway, so that Lloyd Webber had the satisfaction of having 3 of his shows running at the same time. Subsequent successful productions were his Song and Dance (London, March 26, 1981) and Starlight Express (London, March 19,1984). His series of commercial successes reached a lucrative apex with the production of The Phantom of the Opera (London, Oct. 9, 1986), a gothically oriented melodramatic tale of contrived suspense. On April 17,1989, his musical Aspects of Love opened in London. His musical setting of the 1950 Billy Wilder film Sunset Boulevard was first staged in London on July 12, 1993. Apart from popular shows, Lloyd Webber wrote a mini- opera, Tell Me on a Sunday, about an English girl living in N.Y., which was produced by BBC Television in 1980. Quite different in style and intent were his Variations for Cello and Jazz Ensemble (1978), written for his brother, and his Requiem Mass (N. Y., Feb. 24, 1985). He was knighted in 1992.

Bibliography

G. McKnight, A. L.W.(London and N.Y., 1984); J. Mantle, Fanfare: The Unauthorized Biography of A. L.W.(London, 1989); M. Walsh, A. L.W.: His Life and Works (NY., 1989); H. Mühe, Die Musik von A. L. W.(Hamburg, 1993).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire