Audiences seem to have grown up on the show, and the people who come to see it say it's better than ever. So it seemed to me, why not?

Audiences aren't going to get rid of me. One thing I can say, with absolute certainty, is that my shows will still be performed when I'm dead, buried and forgotten. They're going to absolutely outlive me, which is a wonderful thing to think about.

By the time I was ten, everyone knew I wanted to be a producer. I was a very precocious little boy.

In the last couple of years, it has done incredible business in every major city across America. The show has played to capacity on the road and is getting phenomenal reviews, too.

The musical is a kind of beauty-and-the-beast story. It appeals to everyone because it is about an impossible love, which I think many of us have had. The whole framework or design of the show is that you are sucked into this mythical world below the opera house and yet shown something where we can feel the same emotions as one can feel in normal life.

I am in that glorious position where I can redesign and re-package my own work.