LOCAL : Threat of Suit Halts Anaheim Sale of ‘Phantom of the Opera’ Tickets

The Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim halted ticket sales today for Ken Hill’s “The Phantom of the Opera” after a threat of legal action by the producers, who have claimed that the sales are unauthorized.

Yale Gutnick, attorney for the Phantom Touring Co., said the theater had done “a substantial amount” of business in advance ticket sales. “We don’t know how many tickets they’ve sold because we are not getting good information from them,” Gutnick said from his office in Pittsburgh, Pa., “but our conservative guesstimate is in the neighborhood of $100,000 at least.”

Celebrity Theatre officials have failed to respond to repeated inquiries from The Times.

The theater has been advertising a December engagement of the show--a version of the “Phantom” that inspired Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical--for several months without authorization, Gutnick said. He was scheduled to speak with theater officials today and said he would demand that ticket purchases be refunded.

Klaus Kolmar, the New York booking agent for the show’s upcoming national tour, said Wednesday that the theater had been negotiating for the show but had not completed a contract. He said the producers required a deposit in the “low five figures” but that the theater “never deposited two cents.”