(born 1948). Phenomenally successful British composer and musical comedy writer Andrew Lloyd Webber helped revitalize British and American musical theater of the late 20th century. The best of his musicals were lavish productions that featured dramatic staging along with vivid melodies that blended such different musical styles as rock and roll, English music hall song, and operatic forms. Born in London on March 22, 1948, Andrew Lloyd Webber studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and at the Royal College of Music. While a student, he wrote his first full-length dramatic production, The Likes of Us. He also began a ten-year collaboration with lyricist Tim Rice, with whom he created Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. First performed at a boys' school in 1968, Joseph earned worldwide popularity in a later full-length version. In 1971 Lloyd Webber and Rice premiered their second venture, Jesus Christ Superstar, an extremely popular though controversial work that blended classical forms with rock music to tell the story of the life of Jesus Christ. Their last collaboration was Evita (1978), a musical about Eva Perón, the wife of Argentine dictator Juan Perón. For his next major effort, Cats (1981), Lloyd Webber created a musical score for verses from a children's book by poet T.S. Eliot. The show ran for 18 years on Broadway, closing in 2000 after 7,485 performances, making it the longest-running play in Broadway history. With lyricists Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe, Lloyd Webber composed a hugely popular musical version of The Phantom of the Opera (1986). His other musicals include Song and Dance (1982), Starlight Express (1984), Aspects of Love (1989), Sunset Blvd. (1993), and By Jeeves (1975; rewritten in 1996). Lloyd Webber won numerous awards, including an Academy award in 1997, with Rice, for best song for “You Must Love Me” from the film version of Evita (1996). He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain in 1992. |