The `Phantom' Appears -- Sure It's Kitsch, But It's Staged With A Style That Will Please Lloyd Webber's Legion Of Fans

"The Phantom of the Opera." Composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, book by Webber and Richard Stilgoe, lyrics by Charles Hart. Directed by Harold Prince. At 5th Avenue Theatre, 1326 Fifth Ave. Plays Tuesdays-Sundays, through March 6. $15-$65. 628-0888.

A sweep of the cape, a thundering chord from the organ, a crash of the crystal chandelier: it can only mean one thing.

The Phantom is among us.

Last night the third U.S. touring company of Andrew Lloyd Webber's gargantuan hit, "The Phantom of the Opera," had its official debut at the 5th Avenue Theatre. And the crowd on hand got pretty much what it came for.

This 1988 Tony-winning musical of Gaston Leroux's 80-year-old horror fable, about a beastly musician and the beauteous singer he covets, is drenched in romance. Lloyd Webber's pseudo-operatic score oozes sentimentality. And the capably performed production, directed by Harold Prince and designed by Maria Bjornson, brilliantly gilds the Grand Guignol.

It is the visual bedazzlement of "Phantom" that raises the "penny dreadful" melodrama to blockbuster status and baroque scale. And, for this viewer, it is what makes the syrupy story and often oppressive music bearable.

With all the imagination and technical virtuosity money ($8 million) can buy, the show sweeps you along on a journey through the 1881 Paris Opera House - from the rooftop on a starry night, to a misty, hidden underground grotto, where the dangerous, facially disfigured Phantom (played here by Franc D'Ambrosio) dwells.

The musical's myriad set transformations flow seamlessly, framed by an arch of outsized golden angels and cherubim installed over the 5th Avenue's intrinsic Chinese decor.

The performance opens with an auction in a derelict theater, and in a flash turns into a fabulously ornate parody of a fin du siecle opera, complete with immense painted sets of Egyptian pharaohs, bead-skirted corps de ballet, a soprano garbed like something out of "Arabian Nights," and a giant prop elephant. Patterned after similar exotic extravaganzas by 19th-century composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, this mini-opera is ostensibly about the explorer Hannibal.

It's a hoot. But other, simpler elements also transform the atmosphere: dark velvet drapery, dozens of candles, magic mirrors, smoke and mist, thrown voices, sudden flares, small explosions. And Andrew Bridge's lighting scheme is splendid at both elucidating and obscuring.

"Phantom" can be absorbed as Prince's sophisticated and loving homage to the art of stagecraft, a sensuous fusion of decadent 19th-century hyper-theatrics and modern stage technology.

It also is a wallow in soggy kitsch.

Lloyd Webber has fun kidding the excesses of costume opera, in the grandiose "Hannibal" number, and sendups of 18th-century opera bouffe a la "Don Pasquale." And Lloyd Webber's most memorable "serious" melody, for the hypnotic and seductively staged "Music of the Night" number, is very pleasing indeed.

But for much of the score, the composer wields the kind of emotional sledgehammer he mocks others for. He also repeats his past sin of endlessly recycling several tunes. And the overwrought ensembles ("Notes/Prima Donna" and "Notes/Twisted Every Which Way") strain the ears. Meanwhile, the text (by Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe and lyrics (by Stilgoe and Charles Hart) settle for a plodding triteness.

Of course, millions of "Phantom" fans don't agree, or could care less if ambiguity and subtlety are in short supply. For them, the old gothic romance archetypes - the brutal but sensitive Phantom/villain, his virginal protege-victim, Christine (Tracy Shayne), and her handsome rescuer, Raoul (Ciaran Sheehan) still exert charm, especially when so attractively packaged.

The leads in this new "Phantom" company fulfill their assignments well, though they too avoid subtlety as if it were sacrilege. As the Phantom, D'Ambrosio burns at high intensity, and his singing throbs with emotion. But he hasn't yet found the more brooding, enigmatic dimensions of the man.

Shayne looks lovely in her flowing ringlets and Bjornsen's period gowns. She moves with a dancer's grace, and sings in a limpid voice - at times unsettled by an overpowering vibrato.

The great discovery here is Sheehan. Raoul is a thankless role: Prince Charming with no horse. But Sheehan sings beautifully, acts without affectation, and avoids the puffed-chest heroics that often go with the territory. He and Shayne have real sexual chemistry too - more, at this point, than she has with the Phantom.

My reservations about "Phantom of the Opera" notwithstanding, the show's three-month run will likely set local box-office records. So if you go, enjoy. But keep this in mind: There's a difference between a great musical, and an impressive musical gee-gaw. "Phantom" is the latter.