15. October 2026
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Songs Of My Life: Floor Jansen & Henk Poort – Phantom of the Opera

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

In my Songs of the Year, I feature songs which influenced and fascinated me. This time, I feature a song which definitely influenced me since a long part of my music-listening life. However, this year, in 2026, I got even more attracted by it. I’ll take you to Floor Jansen and Henk Poort’s version of Phantom of the Opera.

 

Phantom of the Opera – The Story of the Song

The story of The Phantom of the Opera starts in 1918. In that year, the French author Gaston Leroux released the Gothic horror novel Le Fantome de l’Opera, which is the basis of all music and stage productions thereafter. Regarding musical productions, you typically think of Andrew Llloyd Webber’s version. However, there is a previous playbook by Ken Hill, which debuted in 1976 in Lancester. Later, in 1984, it was on stage at the Newcastle Playhouse. It later appeared on Shaftesbury Theatre in London’s West End and multiple domestic and international stages.

In 1991, Andrew Lloyd Webber and his wife at this time, Sarah Brightman, visited Ken Hill’s version of the musical at Theatre Royal Stratford East. Hill and Webber knew each other – they worked together on other musical productions. Initially, Webber wanted to develop Hill’s version to a West End musical format, but finally decided to go for a very own and independent production.

The Phantom by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s version had its debut at his home, Sydmonton Court in Hampshire in 1985. One year later, it had its first West End appearance in late September 1986 at Her Majesty’s Theatre. The two main characters, the Phantom and Christne were played by Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman. They also did  the Broadway version in 1988. Thereafter the musical was a huge success worldwide. It is one of the most successful musicals of all times. Webbers website states over 200 cities and 23 languages in which the musical has taken place. Over 160 million tickets have been sold.

Quite unusual, the core song The Phantom of the Opera is already taking place in the middle of the first act. The Phantom escorts Christine by boat to his lair. While this is taking place, they sing the famous duet., The original recording peaked seventh in the British and eleventh in the Irish single charts of 1986. The album has been a huge success as well. For example, it is a twelve time platinum record in New Zealand and a triple one in the U.K.. Local versions of the musical soundtrack worked great as well. The Canadian album is an eight time platinum, the German one got three platinum records.

 

And then, there was Nightwish

In early 2002, the Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish recorded their version of Phantom of the Opera. Second male voice Marko Hietala sang the Phantom’s part. Christine’s part was obviously taken by their female lead singer at that time, Tarja Turunen. She is a professional classical singer, who studied in Karlsruhe, Germany. In 1996, she co-founded Nightwish. As its ninth and thus penultimate track of the album Century Child, it was released on 25th May 2002  Despite the song is regarded to be one of the best songs ever recorded by the band at that era and also got a lot of critical acclaim, it has never been released as a single.

Turunen left the band in 2005, Hietala in 2021. As the lead vocalist, Swedish singer Anette Olzon took Turunen’s role from 2007 to 2012. However, after the mid 2000’s, the band hadn’t performed the song live any more. In 2013, Dutch singer Floor Jansen joined the band, but this initially did not change this “ban”.

 

And then, there was Dutch TV

In 2009, Dutch national TV company AVROTROS introduced the show De beste zangers van Nederland (“the best singers of the Netherlands”). Nowadays, the show is just named Beste Zangers. Skilled Dutch singers compete by singing cover versions of songs by one of the other contestants. The show, which roughly lasts an hour per episode, still runs in the Netherlands and has been adopted in multiple other countries.

From 24th August to 12th October 2019, the show had its 12th season. Two of the contestants were Floor Jansen and Henk Poort. Poort is a Dutch singer, who majorly does opera and musicals and had played the Phantom in the Dutch version of the musical before. In the last show on 12th October 2019 featuring duets, Jansen and Poort performed their version of Phantom of the Opera. It majorly follows the original Nightwish recording, but is branded by two incredible vocal performances. The reactions by the other artists during the performance were stunning – and so did the public thereafter. Until today, the recording has been streamed 30 million times on YouTube or more than 17 million times on Spotify.

 

The Phantom is back on stage

Three years later, on 28th November 2022, Nightwish performed the song again live on stage after some 17 years. Henk Poort was the guest vocalist at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam. The song was the fifteenth and thus penultimate song of the concert held in the 17,000 people arena. Again, this performance drew a lot of attention and was later also part of the DVD recording of their Human. :||: Nature. World Tour. The YouTube recording lead to 12 million streams until today.

 

 

Phantom of the Opera – My Story of the Song

Striclty speaking, my story of or with Phantom of the Opera started some day I cannot remember exactly in the 1990’s. At that time, I saw the musical in London. I definitey have to see it again one day – it’s an amazing stage play. However, the Phantom of the Opera scene is what stayed in my heart.

 

My Nightwish era with Phantom

My somehow second episode with Phantom of the Opera must have been roughly ten years later. At that time, I ran into Nightwish. Especially their Wishmaster was a song I absolutely loved and thus I bought the Century Cbild album. I still absolutely love this album nowadays – and whenever I decide to write about the Albums of my Life of records I loved listening to before the Flyctory.com times – this one might be one of the first ones. However, my favorite song altered rapidly. This duet of Tarja Turunen and Marco Hietela towards the end of the album got me. And I just had to listen to this song again and again. Since then, the song had been a regular listen of mine.

It’s not that much in focus of this post. But finally, Phantom of the Opera in the original Nightwish version paved the route to another Finnish music love of mine. I already told you in the Songs of my Life about Hard Rock Hallelujah about it. I just had to see that song live on stage and thus visited a Nightwish show in Oberhausen, on 11th January 2003. Phantom of the Opera blew me away on stage – but much more, the support act won my heart. Way before their Eurovision Song Contest victory (they just had songs like Would You Love a Monsterman – a real classic!), the Finnish hard rock monsters Lordi supported their countrymen. By far, I was not the only one who at first felt that these guys are a bit of creepy – but minutes later were absolutely fascinated by Mr Lordi and his not-that-usual bandmates.

 

Sorry, Floor – I should have given you a chance!

With Nightwish’s transition from Tarja Turunen to Floor Jansen, I lost a bit of contact to Nightwish. Call me a traditionalist – but I just absolutely loved what Tarja had done in the studio and on stage. I felt that the new songs and new versions are nice, but missed the Tarja spirit in them. Nowadays, I would say that I was wrong – and if Floor is happening to read this posting one day, I have to deeply say sorry for that. From a nowadays perspective, I look at this time differently (even though I still love what Tarja is doing, e.g. as a solo artist).

Dutch TV channels are – unfortunately – not that present in my home region, even though the border is less than an hour away from where I live. Thus, I completely missed the amazing performance of Floor and Henk they had in the Dutch TV show. To be honest, call me a moron, I did not even know Henk Poort as a singer. Shame on me (again…)!. At one day, maybe two or three years ago, I ran into a video of a show in Amsterdam on YouTube. Nightwish (with Floor Jansen, of course) performed at Beste Zangers – and for that song, Henk Poort stepped on stage. This video was absolutely mindblowing to me. I had to watch it several times. And my wife – sorry (the third one in this paragraph…) had to watch it again and again as well.

 

The best duet ever recorded?

YouTube must have felt that there is a certain addiction to this song. Until today, I very often pops up in my main page of the streaming platform – either in that stadium version or in the original Dutch TV one. Of course, I more and more got to learn about Henk Poort again. Nowadays, I love the TV version more. Of course, the Amsterdam recording has force, the energy of the masses in the Netherlands. But you see the reaction of the other (high class) musicians in the TV show version. And you see how they more and more feel that this song is something special. It’s just the way I feel about it.

You shouldn’t be too quick with these kind of superlatives. However, to me, Phantom of the Opera by Floor Jansen and Henk Poort is the best duet ever recorded. The vocal precision and mastery, the rocking force from the Nightwish band – this song fascinated me even when I listen to it again and again. I hope that one day I will be gifted to have this experience live on stage as well – it would definitely be an absolute gift for me as a music lover.

 

Phantom of the Opera- Spotify and Lyrics

Here is the Floor Jansen and Henk Poort version of Phantom of the Opera on Spotify:

Among other sources, you can find the lyrics here, based on the musical interpretation by Sarah Brightman.

 

Songs Of My Life Playlist

I created a playlist with all the Songs Of My Life songs so far. It will be updated with very new episode:

 

Floor Jansen – Hytress World Tour 2027

In early 2027, Floor Jansen is presenting her new Hytress all over Europe.

Th 14.01.2027 Antwerp (Belgium) – Trix
Fr 15.01.2027 Paris (France) – Bataclan
Sa 16.01.2027 London (United Kingdom) – Electrix Brixton
Th 21.01.2027 Nuremberg (Germany) – Löwensaal
Fr 22.01.2027 Pratteln (Switzerland) – Konzertfabrik Z7
Sa 23.01.2027 Stuttgart (Germany) – Im Wizemann
Mo 25.01.2027 Frankfurt – Batschkapp
Tu 26.01.2027 Munich – Backstage
We 27.01.2027 Prague (Czechia) – Roxy
Fr 29.01.2027 Warsaw (Poland) – Roxy
Sa 30.01.2027 Leipzig (Germany) – Täubchenthal
Su 31.01.2027 Hamburg – Grosse Freiheit 36
Th 04.02.2027 Gothenburg (Sweden) – Pustervik
Fr 05.02.2027 Stockholm – Nalen
Su 07.02.2027 Helsinki (Finland) – House of Culture
Th 11.02.2027 Oberhausen (Germany) – Turbinenhalle
Fr 12.02.2027 Utrecht (Netherlands) – TivoliVredenburg
Sa 13.02.2027 Tilburg – Popodium 013

 

Songs Of My Life

Here are the postings of the personal Songs Of My Life category:

 

Hotels in the Netherlands

Here are all my hotel reviews related to the Netherlands:

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