Charles Hart (lyricist)
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Charles Hart (born 1962, London) is a British lyricist, songwriter and musician. He attended Robinson College, Cambridge and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
He is best known for writing the lyrics to Andrew Lloyd Webber's phenomenally successful stage musical The Phantom of the Opera, which has since been produced as a film. He also co-wrote (with Don Black) the lyrics to Lloyd Webber's 1989 musical Aspects of Love, based on the novel by David Garnett.
He began writing lyrics as a child and first seriously contemplated turning his talent into a profession in the 1970s when his grandmother - Angela Baddeley, an actress - was on stage in a London production of A Little Night Music.[1]
"When I was at the Guildhall I sent a tape to [Stephen] Sondheim, fully expecting a reply hailing the next true genius of the West End," he said in a rare interview in The Times. "All I got was a note saying that I had 'rhyming poison' which got in the way of my characters and plot, and of course he was entirely right. But my ambition was to be an English Sondheim.
"Being a lyricist is the ideal job for a university-educated dilettante, because it uses up all the rubbish in your education."[2]
He attracted the attention of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh when they were judges for the Vivian Ellis awards, in which Hart was a finalist for his musical based on Moll Flanders.
Lloyd Webber hired him as a lyricist for The Phantom of the Opera a year later.
In 1993, he also created new lyrics for Der Vampyr, to create The Vampyr - A Soap Opera for BBC Television.
He has received two Ivor Novello Awards and has been nominated twice for a Tony Award.
[edit] References
- ^ Morley, Sheridan, Interview with Charles Hart, The Times, October 8, 1986
- ^ Morley, Sheridan, Interview with Charles Hart, The Times, October 8, 1986
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