Recently I saw a Broadway production of Phantom of the Opera in for the first time. This was a cool experience! I'd heard a little bit about it before, but too not much, so I went in effectively blind to most of the story elements.
The thing that struck me most about Phantom was how meta it got. Above all, this was a musical about a theatre, being played in a theatre, and this production used that to great effect. There were moments where they had characters in the actual orchestra pit or played sound effects from the emergency exits, which was cool. I'm not sure if the snippets of other musicals shown in there were real ones or not, but they were entertainingly full of spectacle and occasionally even advanced the plot. (Believe me, after watching Cats, I'd forgotten that musicals could have a plot.)
This production's Christine felt like she was struggling with a mentorship that turned out to be more dangerous than she ever could have initially anticipated, with light ravishment fantasy elements that quickly lost their fun when the Phantom ramped up his possessive, stalker-like behavior. I interpret her final behavior at the end where she kisses the Phantom as playing along with his demands for the sake of appeasement, not because there was any serious interest there. It was a pretty long makeout session in this version, but I see this as Christine having realized the Phantom is obsessed with her and thinking she'd have to do more than a quick peck on the lips in order to get the Phantom to let Raoul go.
I've seen discussion of Phantom overall that Christine was actually in a love triangle between the Phantom and Raoul, and that of the two she always felt more passion towards the Phantom. Personally, I don't see it. I'm not sure if the difference is due to how different versions of this across the many different theatre runs and movies portray the characters, feminist lenses of interpretation, or the particular life experiences I have, but whatever. My interpretation is mine.
Overall I had a good time with this! The music was emotionally evocative, the drama got me invested, and the sets and dancing were fun to watch. It felt like a love letter to theatre as a whole. That's not my native media, but it's something I could still appreciate some as an outsider. Phantom is worth seeing done professionally if you can.