Andrew Lloyd Webber "Joseph" began life as a short cantata that gained some recognition on its second staging with a favourable review in "The Times". For its subsequent performances, Rice and Lloyd Webber revised the show and added new songs to expand it to a more substantial length. Continued expansion eventually culminated in a 1972 stage musical and then a two-hour-long production being staged in the West End in 1973 on the back of the success of "Jesus Christ Superstar". In 1969 Rice and Lloyd Webber wrote a song for the Eurovision Song Contest called "Try It and See", which was not selected.
The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical) part by an earlier musical version of the same story by Ken Hill, Lloyd Webber's score is sometimes operatic in style but maintains the form and structure of a musical throughout. The full-fledged operatic passages are reserved principally for subsidiary characters such as Andre and Firmin, Carlotta, and Piangi. They are also used to provide the content of the fictional "operas" that are taking place within the show itself, viz., "Hannibal", "Il Muto", and the Phantom's masterwork, "Don Juan Triumphant". "Here, Lloyd Webber pastiched various styles from the grand operas of Meyerbeer through to Mozart and even Gilbert and Sullivan."