Fifty years ago, the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar” — with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice — opened on Broadway. Outside the sold-out shows, protesters called the musical blasphemous.

The production was a risk. It tells the story of the last seven days of Jesus’ life through the eyes of one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot. As Lloyd Webber recently told the British newspaper The Telegraph, producers considered it “the worst idea in history” and didn’t want to put it onstage.

Some initial reactions echoed those fears. The Times critic Clive Barnes panned the production: “It all rather resembled one’s first sight of the Empire State Building. Not at all uninteresting, but somewhat unsurprising and of minimal artistic value.”

Ultimately, the show won over audiences. A spectacle that married rock and musical theater, the musical paved the way for shows like “Les Misérables” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” Sarah Bahr writes in The Times. — Claire Moses, a Morning writer
My family and me were temporarily living in Westfield NJ, very near to NYC, while I worked on a project in nearby Linden NJ. We went to see our first Broadway play. It was an "experience"

I think my wife and me were among the very few in the theater not smoking pot-----during the show, but despite that we enjoyed immensely the play and the music

It served to make life long Broadway patrons of both my wife and me.