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Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber 1948-, British theatrical composer. A member of a successful musical family, he began composing musicals as a teenager; Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1968) was an early work done in collaboration with the lyricist Tim Rice. Lloyd Webber's spectacular string of hit musicals beginning in the 1970s helped transform London into the major center for new musicals. His scores include those for Jesus Christ, Superstar (1971), his first major success, also in collaboration with Rice; Evita (1978), a fictional biography of Eva Perón ; The Phantom of the Opera (1986; Tony); Aspects of Love (1989); Sunset Boulevard (1993; Tony); and The Woman in White (2004), based on the classic Wilkie Collins suspense novel. His show Cats (1981), based on poems by T. S. Eliot , was the longest-running production in Broadway history until The Phantom of the Opera set a new record in 2006. Lloyd Webber was knighted in 1992 and created a life peer (Baron Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton) in 1997. In 2000 he purchased 10 London theaters and variety halls, which, when added to the three he already owned, made him the dominant owner in the world's largest theatrical district.