Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and his team were reportedly tinkering with the end of Love Never Dies right up until Tuesday’s spectacular opening night. It is still not right, but this is a trifling criticism when measured against the many merits of a show that can already be hailed a stonking success.

Many years in gestation, after what might be called a long Phantom pregnancy, the musical bursts into life with amazing power to enthral and enchant. The story (Lord LW and Ben Elton) is a strong one; the songs are richly melodic and in pleasing variety; the lush orchestral passages find the composer on his finest, almost Puccinian, form; Bob Crowley’s designs offer jaw-dropping sights of the weird and wonderful.

Setting the action on New York’s Coney Island – where ten years after his presumed death at the Paris Opera The Phantom (Ramin Karimloo) is running his Phantasma attraction – was a very shrewd artistic move. (It will also, surely, prove an inspired commercial one, too, when the show opens on Broadway later in the year.) The arcane exotica and freak shows found in this iconic pleasure ground reflect the tortured side of The Phantom’s character, while the roundabouts and roller-coasters – not to mention proximity to sandy beaches and lapping sea – introduce welcome shafts of sunshine into the show (director Jack O’Brien).

This comes most perfectly when Meg Giry (Summer Strallen) and other buxom belles wow Phantasma’s audience with their vampish Bathing Beauty, already obvious as one of the show’s big hits.

Meg and her miserable one-time ballet teacher mother (Liz Robertson) – think Manderley’s Mrs Danvers – are dismayed, however, to find a rival attraction ranged against her. As that other showman P.T. Barnum did with Jenny Lind, The Phantom has hired an opera singer – also a Swede as it happens – to amuse the punters. She is, of course, Christine Daaé (Sierra Boggess), with whom he had been involved in a three-cornered relationship in Paris (as all who have seen the world’s most popular musical will remember). Precipitating – though she can hardly expect it – a renewed romantic tussle, she arrives in New York accompanied by Raoul (Joseph Millson), now her husband and a grouchy and boozy wastrel, and ten-year-old son Gustave, the only new character in this sequel.

The lad, who has a crucial part in the plot, was brilliantly played on Tuesday (there are seven young actors in this demanding role) by Harry Child, 14, whose piping treble voice was heard to superb effect in the affecting duet with Christine on Look With Your Heart.

Other musical highlights in the show include The Phantom and Raoul’s antagonistic duet Devil Take the Hindmost, the ironically titled Dear Old Friend, with its display of mutual dislike involving most of the leading characters, and The Phantom’s heart-tugging aria ’Til I Hear You Sing.

Best of all, though, is the title song, which is delivered by Christine to her Phantasma audience. As this soaring melody reached its climax on Tuesday, with everyone listening surely blinking back the tears, Andrew Lloyd Webber rapidly exited through the stalls. Overcome with emotion? I think it likely. And possibly he was reflecting on the singular appropriateness of The Phantom’s words spoken as this lovely tune faded on the air: “My Christine. What a triumph you gave me tonight.”

Adelphi Theatre: Phone: 0844 412 4651 (www.loveneverdies.com).