Theater: Music Of The Night THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

Even if The Phantom of the Opera were the greatest show on earth, probably nothing in the way of actual experience could measure up to the hoopla that preceded last week's U.S. debut of the monster-meets-girl musical. No previous offering in Broadway history has rivaled the $18 million advance sale for Phantom, a commitment made by hundreds of thousands of people to pay up to $50 a ticket, generally before having had a chance to hear any of the songs, read any reviews or acquire the vaguest familiarity with the imported-from- London stars.

Some of the show's lures are known commodities: Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar) and Director Harold Prince (Cabaret, Follies) have mounted some of the flashiest spectaculars of recent years, including their prior collaboration, Evita. Practically everyone, it seems, has seen a movie version of Phantom, although few have read Gaston Leroux's turgid 1910 thriller about the hideously misshapen genius who constitutes himself the shadow ruler of the Paris Opera House and, upon becoming infatuated with a chorine, maneuvers her career from afar. The beauty-and-the- beast theme and subterranean wonderland setting echo the myths of Persephone, Pygmalion and Faust and also contemporarily embrace Freudian metaphors of sexual awakening. The Broadway launch has been boosted by publicity about Phantom in London, where, since its debut in October 1986, virtually the only way to get in on short notice has been to belong to the royal family: the Princess of Wales, a particular fan, has attended four times.

These rational factors go only part way in explaining the extraordinary anticipation that Phantom has aroused. The show apparently taps into yearnings for a transporting sensory and mystical experience: in a word, for magic. On that primal level, despite considerable and at times embarrassing shortcomings, Phantom powerfully delivers. The story may be muddled, the characters sketchy, some performances shallow and the music often slushily derivative. So what. For those who seek an equivalent to a ride through the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World -- seemingly a vast proportion of today's Broadway audience -- Phantom is a brilliantly manipulated journey, scary yet ultimately unthreatening. A prime example is the show's most celebrated effect, the gasp-evoking plummet from the ceiling almost to the floor of a 1,500-lb. chandelier. Many spectators arrive knowing it will drop, and the staging gives plenty of clues to the rest. Equally, however, audiences can trust that the "danger" will be averted at the last possible minute, so the dread is purely titillating, without a hint of life's real pains and perils.