At: Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph St. Tickets: 800-775-2000; BroadwayInChicago.com; $35-$100. Runs through: March 4

Love Never Dies isn't a musical—it's an opera in 19thcentury-style: a melodrama told via grand spectacle, grand passions and through-scored sweeping music.

It asks if an obsessive homicidal maniac can find happiness with a golden-throated woman drawn to controlling, abusive men. It's risibly implausible and over-the-top, but no more so than Verdi's Il Trovatore or Gounod's Faust. If you believe nothing succeeds like excess, you'll love Love Never Dies. I had a good time in spite of myself, engulfed in its utterly rococo theatricality.

This sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, set 10 years later, draws on a 1999 Frederick Forsyth novel, with many alterations. Christine Daae ( Meghan Picerno ) now is an opera star, married to surly Vicomte Raoul de Chagny ( Sean Thompson ). With their musically precocious son Gustave ( Chicagoan Casey Lyons, alternating with Jake Heston Miller ), they arrive in New York for Christine's American debut and shockingly find the Phantom ( Gardar Thor Cortes ) alive and wealthy, the owner of an elaborate Coney Island sideshow. The Phantom—still slipping with ridiculous ease through mirrors—again pursues Christine with tragic consequences in the opera tradition.

Absolutely no one has larger theatrical visions than Sir Andrew—he isn't merely a composer—and this story's combo of Belle Époque setting, Arte Nouveau style, opera and carnival gives him kid-in-a-candy-shop opportunities for indulgence. The spectacle alone is worth the ticket price, a dazzling kaleidoscope of sets and costumes ( both by Gabriela Tylesova ), miraculous lighting ( Nick Schlieper ), and wigs and hair ( Backstage Artistry ) quite beyond lavish. Then, the orchestra—with full string section—is huge by today's Broadway standards. It's glorious to hear under Dale Rieling's baton, with Mick Potter's astute sound design.

Webber, a classically trained composer, provides always tuneful and complex music with the choicest moments paralleling set pieces in opera: the quartet "Dear Old Friends," the manly Phantom-Raoul duet "Devil Take the Hindmost," Christine's waltz ballad "Look with Your Heart," the tango section of "Beneath a Moonless Sky" and the gorgeous title song—a waltz aria for Christine, grandly Puccini-esque in the best sense. The lyrics are smarter than most Webber works, although Webber remains wedded to repetitive four-line stanzas with predictable A-B-A-B end rhymes.

The cast really is special. Baritone Cortes and contralto Picerno are stellar in challenging, very large and truly operatic roles. Thompson and the gifted young Lyons shine in support, as do Karen Mason ( welcome home, doll! ) and Mary Michael Patterson as Madame Giry and daughter Meg, central characters in the subplot.

A carny ride operator once told me, "Don't look under the seat; it's where the girls vomit." Despite its strengths, Love Never Dies is dark stuff with no truly likeable character ( well, maybe Gustave ). Coney Island is tawdry beneath the glitz and clowns are scary, and Love Never Dies captures that chiaroscuro quite well.

See related article at Article Link Here .