Phantom of the Opera's John Riddle Played Carlotta in His Bedroom, Now He's Raoul on Broadway

John Riddle, The Phantom of the Opera’s newest Raoul, has been singing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s songs of love and loss for 25 years. Phantom was the first show he ever saw, he said to Beth Stevens on #LiveAtFive. 

Riddle grew up near Oberlin, Ohio and knew nothing about musicals until his father brought him to see The Phantom of the Opera in Toronto. Riddle was five years old, completely taken by the musical and curiously not terrified by a masked man with an underground lair and a weapons-grade chandelier. “I sat there the whole entire time at the edge of my seat, didn’t say a word,” he said. “I was wearing a tuxedo, too, cause that was back in the day when you would dress up to the theater. And I sat there, and I turned to [my father] after the show, and I said ‘I want to be an actor.’”

Riddle performed in musicals in high school—dancing a self-proclaimed cringeworthy ballet in Carousel and wowing his grandmother with a first-rate Harold Hill—but his first performances were probably spent belting out Phantom’s cast album in his bedroom. “I was probably Carlotta first,” he joked, “and then probably Christine after that, and then definitely the Phantom all the time. [Carlotta] has all the good songs.”

Riddle studied musical theater at the University of Cincinnati. He then joined the 2013 national tour of Evita, was cast in the 2014 Kennedy Center production of Little Dancer and made his Broadway debut as Young Anton in the 2015 Broadway production of Kander and Ebb’s The Visit. Riddle also originated the role of Hans in Frozen and joined The Phantom of the Opera in September. 

“I think it’s really fun,” Riddle said about jumping into the part of Raoul and joining a long-running production after originating a leading role in Frozen, “because you have the blueprint out in front of you, and they say you have to walk here and there, but then you get to fill in the blanks. The coloring book is already written out,"  he added, "and then you walk in with your box of crayons and you color it all in.”

Watch the rest of Riddle’s #LiveAtFive interview below and catch how he met Broadway.com Phantom vlogger Ben Crawford in a production of Titanic 10 years ago.