Musical theatre responsible for "Les Misérables", which became the longest-running international musical hit in history. The team, in collaboration with Richard Maltby Jr., continued to produce hits, including "Miss Saigon", inspired by the Puccini opera "Madama Butterfly". The British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber saw similar success with "Evita", based on the life of Argentina's Eva Perón; "Cats", derived from the poems of T. S. Eliot (both of which musicals originally starred Elaine Paige); "Starlight Express", performed on roller skates; "The Phantom of the Opera", derived from the Gaston Leroux novel, "Le Fantôme de l'Opéra"; and "Sunset Boulevard" (from the classic film of
Miss Helyett (opera) "The Era" found the music "light and pretty, though not as lively as might be desired", and thought the plot flimsy but told in humorous style. "The Monthly Musical Record" reported that the piece "flows smoothly and simply but without any great originality". Reviewing the English version, "The Standard" commented that the original French piece was "one of the most gratuitously coarse and offensive plays ever presented" and that Burnand's bowdlerisation of the crux of the plot had produced a piece "equally inoffensive and meaningless"; there was praise for the score: "some extremely bright and pretty music". Miss Helyett (opera)