How Francesca Mehrotra Became the First South Asian Christine Daaé

“Masquerade, paper faces on parade,” sings the crowd. “Masquerade, hide your face, so the world will never find you.” Dressed in a slinky black gown and lace mask, I raise my champagne glass and repeat the lyrics, ones I’ve heard countless times since I was a child, but never got to join in on before. Dancers pirouette around the audience, cast as the performance’s “madames and monsieurs,” and butlers lead us through the candle-lit labyrinth of the Paris Opera House. Here, we can be anyone we want to be as we descend into the dream.

In reality, though, this Paris Opera House is in what was once Lee’s Art Shop in Midtown Manhattan, and we, the esteemed guests, are the audience members of “Masquerade,” an off-Broadway, immersive retelling of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera.” 

Akin to the now-shuttered cult phenomenon “Sleep No More,” “Masquerade” transforms audience members from passive observers into active participants, guiding them through a richly detailed theatrical maze. Like finely tuned clockwork, six performances move from room to room, spaced 15 minutes apart, although the audience would never know it. In a single night, the legendary chandelier falls six times. Six different Phantoms serenade and seduce six different Christine Daaés.

The Christine mere inches away from me has been plucked from obscurity as a chorus girl and, with the Phantom’s orchestration, thrust onto the stage as prima donna. As her seraphic voice navigates the iconic soprano cadenza in “Think of Me” with ease and agility, it strikes me that this actor, Francesca Mehrotra, clearly comes from an operatic background. She also just so happens to be the first South Asian woman to play Christine Daaé.

The Dream Role She Never Thought She Could Play

From an early age, Mehrotra loved to sing. Her parents, who had immigrated from India, saw this gift as a blessing from God and enrolled her in a professional choir. “We have such a beautiful desire for excellence in our culture, and so that felt very on-brand for me,” says Mehrotra. 

Despite the love and support from her parents, Mehrotra had the odds stacked against her: “All the roles that would have been a good fit for my talents, they were all cast with white women. I didn’t even feel victimized about it. I was just like, ‘It’s in the script. Laurie is from Oklahoma. I don’t look believably from Oklahoma.’”

Although Christine Daaé was Mehrotra’s dream role since she was 7 years old, she pushed away her love for theater. Instead, she went to school for opera and marketing. After graduating, Mehrotra worked full time in marketing, which gave her the freedom to “not be in a scarcity mindset in [her] art,” but she was often exhausted from working her day job in between auditions, running from audition to audition, not knowing if she would even be seen. Still, she remembers her father calling to say, “This is so amazing, Francesca. I’m so proud of you. This is literally why your mom and I came to America. So that whatever you wanted to do, you would have a path to do it.”

In the end, it took a bit of fate, perseverance, and support from family, friends, and fellow women in the industry who believed in Mehrotra’s talent, for her to confidently enter the theater world and win the role of the sixth Christine. 

Finding Herself Behind the Mask

While rehearsing, Mehrotra recalls Director Diane Paulus — who she describes as “another incredible Asian American female leader” — was intentional about training all six Phantoms and six Christines together to ensure seamless, perfectly timed performances. But Paulus also intentionally cast actors from diverse backgrounds, encouraging them to bring their individuality. 

“We all have slightly different interpretations of the woman that Christine is,” says Mehrotra. “Once we moved into the performance part of the process, when we didn’t get the chance to watch each other every night, we were able to find more of ourselves in her.”

The unconventional closeness of the audience members to the actors demands complete honesty, as “you would be able to tell” otherwise, Mehrotra says. She drew from her own experiences as a recipient of a “moving and life-changing” love and brought that to the forefront of her Christine: “She finds a way to hold the Phantom accountable for what he does, but through mercy and through love, as opposed to condemnation.”

That compassion, behind all of the literal smoke and mirrors, is precisely the heart of “Masquerade.” In the final scene, the Phantom takes off the mask hiding his scars, motioning for the audience members to do the same. As he sings with raw emotion through his tears, he pauses to look each of us in our eyes, as if truly seeing us. 

Mehrotra explains, “There’s so much division right now in our world, and it’s easy to see something in our neighbor that we might not particularly like or that might be uncomfortable for us. […] But, really look at the person. Don’t look at the mask. Don’t look at the disfigurement. Look at everything.”

Despite being a perfectionist and her own harshest critic, Mehrotra confesses that it was “Masquerade” that taught her the mess is also beautiful. “That’s a mask I am continually learning to shed,” she says. “If there’s a night where I feel like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m really not having a good show,’ that’s OK, and I would rather be authentic in that and hope that the audience gets to connect with me.”

Catch “Masquerade” in New York City through Jan. 31, 2027. Get tickets and learn more at masqueradenyc.com.

Feature image credit: MurphyMade