Andrew Lloyd Webber Says He’s Writing a New Musical About the Time the ‘Mona Lisa’ Vanished Without a Trace in 1911

Known for spectacles like “The Phantom of the Opera,” Broadway’s most commercially successful composer now wants to tell the story of the world’s most famous painting

The Mona Lisa returning to the Louvre in 1914 Roger-Viollet / Getty Images

The most recognizable scenes from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals are fever dreams: The subterranean lake beneath the Paris Opera House. The band of Jellicle cats longing to ascend to the Heaviside Layer. The Egyptian pharaoh singing about his prophetic dreams with Elvis-inspired vibrato.

Anyone with a passing knowledge of musical theater can picture these scenes—and hear Lloyd Webber’s scores playing in their heads.…