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
Svetla Vassileva (opera singer) she may be in real life – the person I saw on that stage was 15 years old, naïve, and totally in love with a skunk." Svetla Vassileva (opera singer) Svetla Vassileva (), born on September 9, 1965 in Dobrich, Bulgaria, is a Bulgarian opera singer, soprano. Her repertoire includes Desdemona in Otello, Leonora in La forza del destino, Violetta in La traviata, Alice Ford in Falstaff (Verdi), the title role in Madama Butterfly, La rondine, Suor Angelica and Manon Lescaut, Liu in Turandot (Puccini), the title role in Rusalka (Dvorak), Lisa in Pique Dame, Tatiana in Yevgeni Onegin (Tchaikovsky),