Andrew Lloyd Webber was born on March 22, 1948 in London. His father, musician and composer Bill Lloyd Webber, was the director of the Royal College of Music, and his mother Jean Lloyd Webber (née Johnston) was a piano teacher. The musical abilities of the future author of “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Cats” appeared very early – at the age of three he began to learn to play the violin, at six to compose songs, and when he was nine, his children’s plays were published in the magazine “Music Teacher”.
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Andrew Lloyd Webber was born on March 22, 1948 in London. His father, musician and composer Bill Lloyd Webber, was the director of the Royal College of Music, and his mother Jean Lloyd Webber (née Johnston) was a piano teacher. The musical abilities of the future author of “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Cats” appeared very early – at the age of three he began to learn to play the violin, at six to compose songs, and when he was nine, his children’s plays were published in the magazine “Music Teacher”. As a child, he was greatly influenced by American Broadway musicals My Fair Lady, Gigi, The Sound of Music, West Side Story. After graduating from the prestigious Westminster School, in 1965 Andrew entered Magdalen College in Oxford, but he was never destined to complete his education - by then he had already decided to become a composer and was full of ambitions. Shortly before that, Webber met aspiring poet Tim Rice, his future co-author. After the musical Like Us, Webber and Rice tried to break into the song market by writing several numbers for singer Rose Hannaman. Their first notable creation was the 1968 musical Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dream, based on the biblical legend of Joseph and his brothers. Working on “Joseph”, Webber used various musical styles: rock and roll, ballads, country, elements of French chanson. A few years later, Webber and Rice created their most significant work, which was destined to become the brightest artifact of popular culture of the twentieth century - the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. Having no money to stage the play, the authors decided to initially release an album with a recording of the musical. Appeared in May 1971, the album became a bestseller, and, having sold huge copies, made Webber and Rice real celebrities, and Webber’s bright, melodic and dramatic music gained millions of fans around the world. Nevertheless, the opera’s libretto became a stumbling block – the story of the last week of Christ’s life, seen through the eyes of Judas, was met by many believers with extremely disapproval and caused many protests. Theatrical production soon followed, and in 1973 there was a film adaptation of the musical, carried out by American director Norman Jewison. On July 24, 1972, Webber married Sarah Hugill, who later bore him two children: daughter Imogen and son Nicholas. In the first half of the seventies, Webber paid tribute to cinema, writing music for the comedy detective Stephen Frears “Sleuth” (1971) and the more widely known political thriller Ronald Niem “The Odessa Dossier” (1974). Meanwhile, work on a new musical based on the works of Palem Woodhouse was delayed - Rice refused to participate in writing the libretto and his place was taken by playwright Alan Aikborn, who first tried himself in the unusual role of the author of poems for songs. Due to a number of scripted and staged blunders, the musical, called "Jeeves" ("Jeeves") failed and Webber had to return to the idea of Rice - the creation of a musical play based on the story of the life of the wife of the Argentine dictator Evita Peron.
"Evita" ("Evita") again brought success to its creators - the album with the recording of the musical became a bestseller, and the single "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" ("Don't Cry For Argentina") headed by the British singer Julie Kovtyton. No less success was expected and the stage version – in the UK, “Evita” was recognized as the best musical of the year, and the Broadway production in 1980 received seven Tony theatrical awards in various nominations. Soon the composer presented to the public his "Variations" for cello, accompanied by a group and orchestra, written by him for his younger brother - classical cellist Julian Lloyd Webber. Despite Evita’s triumph, Webber-Rice’s creative tandem soon broke up again. As a libretto for the new musical, Webber took the children's poems of the poet Thomas Sterns Eliot from The Practical Book of the Old Possum on Cats, and the missing lyrics were composed by Sir Trevor Nunn of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who took over the direction of the future masterpiece. The success of "Cats" exceeded all imaginable expectations - starting on May 11, 1981 at the New Theatre in London, the play ran for twenty-one years, becoming the most popular musical in the history of the world theater. The fate of "Cats" was almost as well in the United States, where they walked on Broadway for eighteen years.
The more unexpected was the relative failure that Webber suffered with his next show "Song and Dance" (1982), consisting of two sections: vocal, where his new songs were performed on poems by Don Black and dance, based on music from "Variations". In 1983, the composer divorced his first wife and in June of the following year married a young singer Sarah Brightman, who played the role of Gemima in Cats. At the same time, the premiere of his new musical "Star Express", which, despite the cold reception of critics, was a commercial success and for a long time enjoyed steady popularity. In 1984, Webber, whose name has so far been associated exclusively with pop music, presented his Requiem, written to the text of an ancient Latin mass. At the end of the year, Requiem was recorded in the studio and soon released as a separate album. In the recording of this work, in addition to the wife of the composer Sarah Brightman, tenor Placido Domingo and conductor and director of the Vienna Opera Lorin Maazel took part. Despite the completely non-commercial nature of the work, Requiem sold well, and the soulful aria "Pie Jesu" even hit the British charts. Webber’s next major achievement was the musical based on the novel by writer Gaston Leroux “The Phantom of the Opera”. Even before the performance was shown on stage, the single with the title aria performed by Sarah Brightman and rock musician Steve Harley took seventh place in the UK, and after the premiere, held on 9 October 1986, Webber expected another triumph. In early 1988, the musical started on Broadway. Despite the fact that some critics blamed the new work of the composer for the lack of vivid melodies, highlighting only the main theme, “The Phantom of the Opera” became another musical by Webber, which was destined for a long stage life.