Probably no villains of recent history have been more popular than Count Dracula and the Phantom of the Opera. Both, while guilty of vile deeds, provide multifaceted personalities and sufficient psychological underpinnings — not to mention a wealth of metaphor — to make their stories fascinating in different and recurring versions.

The Phantom, in particular, is a complex mixture of beauty and beast, a lover of fine art and music who can kill quickly and without compunction. Since his origin in the 1910 French novel by Gaston Leroux, he’s been re-created in hundreds of films, books and plays around the globe. Most notably, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “The Phantom of the Opera” has become a worldwide audience magnet and the longest-running play in Broadway history.

There are, however, two other English-language musicals traveling around, “Ken Hill’s Phantom of the Opera,” in which Hill attached modern lyrics to classic opera music, and “Phantom,” by Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston. I rank the latter atop the three, especially when it’s staged as beautifully as it is at Moonlight.

Chris Warren Gilbert (Phantom) and Sarah Bermudez (Christine), head a glorious cast who act as well as they sing, giving full emotional power to Kopit’s book and Yeston’s operetta-like score, more varied and melodic than Lloyd Webber’s. Throughout the evening, I kept pondering what musical history would have been like had this “Phantom” arrived on Broadway first. It was launched in Houston in 1991, had successful runs elsewhere and was gathering investors when Lloyd Webber’s organization announced plans to produce a New York edition of his London smash. Investing, not surprisingly, dried up. These days, Yeston calls it “the greatest hit never to be produced on Broadway.”

Gilbert and Bermudez

By Ken Jacques Photography

All the reinvented Phantoms tell the story somewhat differently. The important distinction is the mask — here it covers both of Erik’s eyes.

I’m kidding, I’m kidding — although I’ve always found the Lloyd Webber trademark especially silly. How much disfigurement could that little mask hide? (The best use of a mask, of course, is in the 1925 Lon Chaney silent.)

Kopit’s version uses backstories to add depth to the characters in the basic and familiar tale of Erik, a mysterious presence living in the catacombs of the Paris Opera. Wanting to hear only pleasing music, he torments the new opera managers, a wealthy husband and his wife, Carlotta, who have taken over because she wants to be the diva. Christine, a talented but untrained soprano, is sent to the Opera by a playboy patron but can only get a job in the costume department. Erik hears her singing and falls in love with Christine’s voice, and then her. He offers to teach her with the condition that she tell no one about him, supposedly masked because he wants to remain anonymous.

The mentoring pays off, and Christine is given a starring role. But Carlotta sabotages her, leading to audience jeering and Erik’s furious chandelier drop (nowhere near the Lloyd Webber spectacular, but still effective). Erik swoops Christine to his hideaway, and they share idyllic moments until she persuades him to remove his mask. Horrified, she flees. Then the story proceeds to its usual tragic ending, but Kopit tosses in a twist that allows for more than the expected heart-tugging scenes.

Gilbert makes Erik mostly sympathetic and shows some athleticism in scenes where he descends via rope from an overhead walkway. Bermudez demonstrates a sublime soprano and vivifies Christine’s mixed feelings about Erik. Debbie Prutsman, who was a delight as Madame Thernardier in Moonlight’s “Les Misérables,” again shines as Carlotta, whether wickedly singing Yeston’s humorous “This Place Is Mine” (featuring the significant line: “A diva’s work is never done”) or drunkenly threatening Christine with a bottle. The other standout is Norman Large, as the ousted theater manager and confidant of Erik. Everyone else gives satisfactory support, although Cris O’Bryon, as the playboy count, could exude a bit more charm instead of smarm.

Director Todd Nielsen’s Moonlight debut, notably in the dual and contrasting scenes cutting back and forth between Christine’s lessons and Carlotta’s disasters, warrants more such work in the future. DJ Gray’s choreography appropriately leans toward the balletic, highlighted by a lovely pas de deux in a flashback scene of Erik’s parents, danced by Seth Belliston and Tiffany Rene Reid.

Christina Munich’s lighting enhanced each mood of the moment and crackled in some graphic pyrotechnics, including that chandelier drop. Peter Hashagen’s sound is superb, especially in singer-musician mixes. Elan McMahan does her usual fine work as musical director and conductor. Roslyn Lehman, Renetta Lloyd and Carlotta Malone coordinated the sumptuous rented costumes, and Tim Jones the multiplicity of props.

The venue’s new fly space allows excellent use of the scenery provided by Houston’s Theatre Under the Stars, with backdrops evoking the scope of the Paris Opera house and the depth of its catacombs, including scenery that Erik uses as his world. The visuals are flanked by spiral staircases leading to that overhead walkway.

Moonlight may be outdoors, but, with its fresh facilities — particularly the crisp sound system — it’s moving up with the Balboa as the county’s top venues for musicals.

Cast and credits