Is the new year a time to reflect on the misjudgments of a life spent opining? Thirty years ago, when the  Phantom of the Opera hit Melbourne like the heatwave that encircled it, some fraction of us were snooty about all that sung-through sub-Puccini melodic marvellousness. Was this how the musicals of Lerner and Loewe and Rodgers and Hammerstein had ended up? Well, Phantom has stood up remarkably well as musical drama, indeed as a form of contemporary opera, so that it’s good to have Opera Australia backing this musical at the Sydney State Theatre.