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
The Letter (opera) old-fashioned—Paul's musical language is in no way derivative of Verdi or Puccini—but we do want it to move fast and hit hard." Later Teachout described the challenges to adapting a literary work into a new medium, in this case an opera: "Every great opera based on a literary source involves an imaginative transformation of the original, one that typically goes far beyond the setting of the old words to new music." In May 2008 Moravec and Teachout discussed the opera at a press conference held in Santa Fe. Moravec called it “an opera "noir", a music drama about ordinary people