He’s best known for wearing face paint, leather and gems as the frontman for Kiss. But Paul Stanley spent a big chunk of 1999 wearing a different costume — and singing a very different kind of music.
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Inspired by seeing the show in London a decade earlier, Stanley took on the lead role in the Broadway musical The Phantom of the Opera for what would up being two extended engagements at Toronto’s Pantages Theatre, beginning on May 25, 1999, and ending, appropriately enough, on Halloween of that same year. “Things went so well that the theater bought out the contract of the actor poised to replace me and had me take the show to the finish line,” he explains in his book Face the Music: A Life Exposed.
Stanley describes the job as “a dream come true” and “an incredibly rewarding experience.” As it turns out, Phantomalso helped him come to terms with a birth defect he had kept hidden from the public for decades, and inspired him to join forces with a charity dedicated to helping children born with similar conditions.
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At first, the Phantom gig was simply another mountain for Stanley to conquer. “I never want to be stuck in someone else’s idea of what I’m supposed to do, or can do,” Stanley explained to Much Music around the time of his first run. “For me, the challenge is always to find something exciting. If you’re scared, it means that you’re doing something good, you’re pushing the envelope.”
The first obstacle Stanley faced was learning how to use his voice in this new setting. He describes the rehearsals as “the hardest work I’ve ever done. Six hours a day. I went home every night slumped in the back of a taxi, exhausted emotionally and — because of the demands of singing a different way and the physicality of the role and the staging — physically.” He worked with a vocal coach to figure out the breath control needed for the show’s musical numbers. When he finally publicly performed as the Phantom, his efforts were rewarded with much praise — including that of bandmate Gene Simmons, who, after attending a show rushed backstage to ask his longtime partner, “Where did you learn to sing like that?”