Phantom of the Opera's final Broadway show, No. 13,981, ended with the original Christine — Sarah Brightman — back onstage 35 years later.
When *The Phantom of the Opera* gave its final Broadway performance on April 16, 2023, the original Christine, Sarah Brightman, returned to the Majestic Theatre stage — 35 years after she first sang the role there.
On the night of April 16, 2023, the audience at the Majestic Theatre watched the 13,981st and final Broadway performance of *The Phantom of the Opera*. And before the house lights came up for good, the woman who started it all was standing onstage again. Sarah Brightman — who created Christine Daaé on the West End in 1986 and on Broadway in 1988 — came back to sing at the closing of the longest-running show in Broadway history.
The evening didn't simply end with a bow. As the Associated Press reported (carried by CBS News), the finale gave way to a reprise of "The Music of the Night," delivered not as a star turn but as a shared act: the current cast, previous actors including Brightman, and the crew — many in street clothes — sang it together on the same boards where the show had run for more than three decades.
Why the original Christine came back for the finale
Brightman's return closed a loop that had been open since the 1980s. She was married to composer Andrew Lloyd Webber when he wrote the role for her voice, and the part's soaring, precise demands were shaped around what she could do. When Broadway's production finally reached its last night, having her walk back onto the Majestic stage was less a nostalgia gimmick than a completion — the person the music was written for, standing inside it one more time.
BroadwayWorld, in its report on the complete final curtain call, documents exactly what she sang. Brightman returned to perform the title song, "The Phantom of the Opera," alongside Peter Jöback. So the night held two distinct musical moments worth keeping straight: her duet on the title number during the curtain call, and the ensemble reprise of "The Music of the Night" that the AP describes as a group effort involving cast, past performers, and crew together. Brightman was part of both — but the "Music of the Night" reprise was not a solo.
After the performance, the architects of the show itself took the stage. BroadwayWorld notes that Lloyd Webber and producer Cameron Mackintosh joined Brightman before the audience — composer, producer, and original star, together, at the end of the run they had launched in New York in January 1988.
How the record was set — and dedicated
The performance count is not a round-number legend. It comes from The Broadway League's records: 13,981 official Broadway performances, verified as the most of any production in Broadway history. That figure is what makes the milestone checkable rather than merely felt — a specific tally, kept by the industry's own body, that no other show has beaten.
The final night carried a private weight too. As Deadline reported, the closing performance at the Majestic was dedicated to Nicholas Webber, the composer's son, who had died in March 2023 at age 43. Lloyd Webber attended the closing having lost his son weeks earlier, which lends the group reprise of "The Music of the Night" a gravity that the wire copy only hints at.
The show closed after grosses had softened in the years following the pandemic shutdown — a business decision, ultimately, ending a run that generations had assumed permanent. That is the seam still worth arguing over. Was 35 years and nearly 14,000 performances the natural life of a piece of theater, or did Broadway retire an institution that could have run indefinitely? The record is settled. Whether the ending was earned or forced is the part the room will keep debating — long after the chandelier stopped rising over the Majestic for the last time.