As the first Disney musical to reach the Broadway stage, one of the longest-running shows in Broadway history, and now with thousands of productions worldwide, Disney's Beauty and the Beast has become a seminal musical-theater experience for an entire generation of theatergoers.

This "tale as old as time" was first recorded on paper in French in the mid-18th century, but "La belle et la bête" was quickly translated into many languages and has circulated around the world in countless versions ever since. The Disney take on the tale premiered in November 1991 as an animated feature film, the first to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award®, and it won Alan Menken and Howard Ashman Oscars® for Best Score and Best Song ("Beauty and the Beast"). The stage musical premiered at the Palace Theatre on April 18, 1994, and ultimately moved to the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, where it closed on July 29, 2007, after making songs like "Belle, "Be Our Guest" and "Something There" show-tune classics.