‘I Have an Advantage Over Verdi. He’s Dead.’ Sting resuscitates his critically divisive Broadway musical at the Met Opera.

By Devon Ivie

Photo: Dina Litovsky for New York Magazine

When The Last Ship, a musical that serves as an elegy to Wallsend, the hardscrabble Northern England shipyard town Sting grew up in, debuted on Broadway in 2014, the critical reception was disappointing. Sting’s original music and lyrics drew praise — he earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score — but the story, by separate book writers, was considered far too muddled. “If you fix one thing, it’s like putting wallpaper up,” Sting tells me. “You put a bit of sticking on there, you push, and then something else happens.” The Broadway run of The Last Ship closed in 2015 with $15 million in lost investments. He realized that several elements needed to change if he wanted another go-round, which he did; he felt he had a “personal debt” to the community that raised him to tell this story. “I know I have a reputation for not being collaborative, but I am,” he insists. “I take consensus and then someone has to make a decision. It’s usually me.”

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