In 1997, fresh off the success of Celine Dion’s version of “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now,” Steinman ended up getting called to an unusual project.

As we transition to discussing the musical, I want to acknowledge a debt to Gibson DelGiudice’s blog for a wealth of background information that was easily digestible for a non-Broadway person. I also want to mention that I know nothing about musicals, really. I had a film professor who once said that if you do not appreciate the musical, it means that you do not understand it, because it is the height of artistic form in the modern age. While he was surely overstating things a bit, it did make me think about it and realize that, truthfully, I don’t understand musicals, and they are complex. So when we throw in that this one is on stage instead of screen, I’m way out of my element. I’m not going to analyze or evaluate Steinman’s work for the stage as part of the musical form. I just want to finish telling his story and talk about his music in the context of his career.

The project of Tanz der Vampire began in 1991 but took until 1997 to look for a composer. Steinman took on the composing chores with little time to complete them, and so went about plundering his own back catalogue for much of the material (though it’s difficult to imagine that he would not have done that anyway–we’ve seen how he works at this point). The result was a score that is usually estimated to be about 70% recycled from Steinman’s past work; but, considering the quality of Steinman’s catalogue, that’s a quality assurance measure. Since everyone involved was seemingly pleased with the quality of the material, I don’t think the lack of originality is terribly important.

Surprising many, the play went on to be an enormous success, still playing in Europe to this day more than a quarter century later. The idea that a musical based on a legendary film failure that was not a musical would turn into that kind of success is absolutely wild to me, but it did happen.

I don’t have anything to say about the lyrics, because I do not speak German (or any of the other languages in which it has appeared in a recognizable form). I won’t say much about the plot–it’s a pretty standard “girl chooses between bad boy (Who is in this case, yes, a vampire) and good boy” story and its only really interesting element is that the vampires win in the end, seemingly taking over the world and wiping out humanity. I can say nothing of the staging/acting/etc.–I just listened to the original Vienna cast recording because that’s what’s available.

However, I can say things about the music, and much of it is really great. It’s all done in a similar style, which is basically what one would expect from an orchestrated rock musical. It’s musical theater with some token guitars thrown in but it’s also probably more “orchestral” than most of the musicals I have heard–it’s using horns and strings and such all over the place, not just to supplement an piano. Is it my ideal arrangement for most of this music? No. I’m a rock fan, and I would rather them be more traditionally “rock” arrangements, but it’s a solid sound framework for Steinman’s work.

The first act is, for me, relatively weak. The opening “Ouverture” is largely “The Storm” and it’s still good, but its sound has been punched up a bit with guitars. Surprisingly, this song works for me as essentially more rock-oriented version of “The Storm,” which I consider an improvement. “Knoblauch” is a remarkably catchy new melody and has a great party atmosphere.

Things are bumpy from there for a while, with bits of “Original Sin” (sometimes large bits) and bits of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” all over the place and seemingly every new bit of melody getting so broken up by dialogue (sung dialogue, but nonetheless dialogue) that just stops it dead in its tracks until “Einladung Zum Ball,” which is essentially a musical theater-arranged version of “Oiriginal Sin,” with severely lacking rhythm. It still has a great atmosphere as it always has, but it doesn’t sound as good.

However, at least for me, the clear highlight of the play to this point is Cornelia Zenz’s voice as Sarah. Every moment sung by her is a step above anything around it just because her voice is that good. And after “Einladung Zum Ball,” she gets a show-stopper in “Draussen Ist Freiheit,” which Steinman and Meat Loaf fans will recognize now but was a new melody at that point. It’s a great song that fits everything so well here that it doesn’t even seem to be missing any of the rock elements that usually accompany Steinman’s best work. The only negative note I have for it is that it has the electronic drumming rhythm from “Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young,” whose opening it steals, playing throughout, and it just feels so at odds with the melody that it’s an almost painful blight on the song.

From there, it feels like a bit of a choppy mess to me until nearly the end of the act, with parts that don’t fit together and many sounding surprisingly conventional just getting thrown around like they were all put in a blender. That’s particularly true of “Wuscha Buscha.” “Tot Zu Sein Ist Komisch” provides a bit of a lift, with Eva Maria Marold proving to be a more than capable voice in her own right and some more Steinman-like grandiosity, but then it not only goes back to a more conventional musical theater sound but also seemingly borrows Stephen Sondheim’s “Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir” melody from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street for a bit, which is odd to say the least.

But the second act is really what makes or breaks this show for most observers, and it all starts with Steinman’s choice of how to open the act. With the stage set for a duet ballad between the Count and Sarah, Steinman needed a vampire love song. Luckily, he’d already written a great one! Unluckily, it was also the most famous song he’d ever written, so famous that every audience would be able to hum along immediately. So, it’s sort of a pickle for Steinman–do you use it or not?

He did, which should surprise no one. And as far as I’m concerned, this is actually the definitive version of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” It’s bigger and heavier than the original, with guitars taking a more prominent role and not just in the rhythm but also providing some lead moments (Exit Eden fans might be able to see some similarities to their recording later). Steve Barton also sings the song wonderfully as the Count, and he doesn’t hold a candle to Zenz–it’s two great voices on the song. The “turn around” counterpoints originally from Rory Dodd also work really well in this version, sung by living paintings of the Count’s ancestors on a wall as a warning of impending danger from the leader of the vampires. Honestly, as a young Steinman fan, I was always kind of annoyed by the idea that “Total Eclipse of the Heart” was his most famous song. It made no sense to me. But once I heard this version, I got it. And it’s still the version I would rather have at any point.

The second act continues in grand Steinman style with “Carpe Noctem,” which opens with “Tonight Is What It Means to be Young” getting repurposed and then transitions to “Good Girls Go to Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere)” in a loud, almost obnoxious form, with piano and string sounds that sound like they’re almost thrown against a wall on all sides. The second act stays much more Steinman-sounding–loud, brash, booming, and without much of the musical theater affectation that happened in the first act.

“Für Sarah” is the second highlight in the second act, with a lovely melody and wonderful sweeping music bubbling below it. Amongst Steinmaniacs, this is a well-known song as “The Vaults of Heaven” (not to be confused with the one that will show up on Whistle Down the Wind later) that only otherwise shows up in a demo form sung by Rory Dodd. It’s an absolutely beautiful song and this is the closest we ever got to a full-on recording of that demo.

And while the entire second act is worth hearing, my favorite moment is all the way at the end. Yes, it’s just “Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young,” but it sounds great in this huge orchestral production. And then it all ends with the vampires’ triumphant shout, in English, “We drink your blood and then we eat your soul/Nothing’s gonna stop us let the bad times roll!” It’s an exhilarating ending!

I remember when I learned of Tanz der Vampire was during the lead-up to the American opening when I was in high school and I was able to hear it somewhere and thought it was just astonishingly great. Now, I find it rather uneven but generally good, with a few really great highlights. I still will take that “Totale Finsternis” over any English-language “Total Eclipse of the Heart” I’ve ever heard and the finale is astonishing, and really the entire second act is sort of like hearing Original Sin II. I wish I could hear this with Steinman lyrics, but that of course was not meant to be.

I’m not going to write much about the failure of Dance of the Vampires, the American version of this play. Go read that Gibson DelGiudice blog–it’s a well-written and detailed-enough without being overwhelming account. Suffice to say, wrong decisions were made at every turn, many (though not all) of them by Steinman. By the time of this disaster, Steinman was in his mid 50s and his health was declining, but this failure still probably had something to do with how little he would work thereafter.

But for now, he was working with the theatrical version of himself, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and the cloud of Dance of the Vampires had not yet begun to form.