The Phantom: Softly, deftly, music shall carress you. Hear it, feel it, Secretly possess you.
The Phantom: Too late for prayers and useless pity!
Christine Daae: Angel of Music, you've deceived me. I gave you my mind blindly.
Auctioneer: Lot 666, then...a chandelier in pieces. Some of you may recall the strange affair of the Phantom of the Opera-a mystery never fully explained. We're told, ladies and gentlemen, that this is the very chandelier that figures in the famous disaster.
The Phantom: You will curse the day you did not do, all that the Phantom asked of you!
Monsieur Lefevre: Perhaps we can frighten the ghosts of so many years ago... With a little illumination.
Lefevre: Gentlemen, good luck. If you need me, I shall be in Australia.
Firmin: What a way to run a business. Spare me these unending trials. Half your cast disappears but the crowd still cheers. Opera, to hell with Gluck and Handel; have a scandal and you're sure to have a hit.
Raoul: Say you love him, and my life is over!
Phantom: What warm, unspoken secrets will we learn.beyond the point of no return?
Phantom: Our Don Juan must lose some weight...it's not healthy in a man of Piangi's age.
Christine Daae: The tears I might have shed for your dark fate, grow cold and turn to tears of hate!
The Phantom: Come, we must return. Those two fools who run my theater will be missing you.
Answer: During "Point of No Return, " the Phantom shares a stage with the very vulnerable Christine. He is still masked, though it is a mask other than his trademark white face covering. The Phantom is well known as a murderer and an escape artist. This is the the equivalent of a hostage situation. To rush the stage might risk lives, and everyone in the know is proceeding with caution. During the song, we do get glimpses of police moving about, and Raoul and others looking concerned, subtly signaling one another and considering their next move. The stage crew seems confused. The dancers go on with the show. And law enforcement officers await the right moment to advance. It also gives us the opportunity to enjoy a dramatic musical number that rushing the stage would interrupt.
Michael Albert