School of Rock follows Dewey Finn, a wannabe rock star who poses as a substitute teacher to earn extra money. He ends up turning a class of high-achieving pre-adolescents into “a guitar-shredding, bass-slapping, mind-blowing rock band.” wrote Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. “Indisputably, the pair were true pioneers and remain role models to at least two generations of Latinos through their careful combination of genuine ties to the land of their birth with an embrace of the English-speaking world beyond.” But there’s tragedy along with triumph here: The show also deals with the 1990 tour-bus accident in which Gloria was critically injured — and from which she recovered to make a poignantly triumphant return to the stage. “It’s a triple love story,” she told the New York Daily News in discussing the jukebox musical. “It’s our personal love story and our love story to music. Emilio had a band in Cuba since he was 8, and it helped him survive. He played accordion for tips in restaurants. And it’s a love story to this coun- 62 artsLife | SUMMER 2017 try, which opened its arms and really let us make our dreams come true.” The Walt Disney Theater is the second stop on the show’s tour, right after an opening in — where else? — Miami. ■ Love Never Dies (November 21–26, 2017). You didn’t think he was gone for good, did you? Love Never Dies is the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s record-shattering adaptation of French author Gaston Leroux’s novel about a mysterious masked musical genius and his obsessive love for a beautiful soprano. The new musical is set in 1907 — years after the Phantom’s disappearance — amid the freak shows of New York’s Coney Island. His love, Christine Daaé, is now one of the world’s great sopranos, but is struggling in her marriage to the drinking and gambling Raoul.
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