‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ at 50: What Was the Buzz?

The rock opera, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice, opened on Broadway on Oct. 12, 1971, to protests, an irate composer — and sold-out shows.

It was the spring of 1970, and Yvonne Elliman, an 18-year-old singer and guitarist from Hawaii, had just finished performing at a London nightclub when a breathless young man rushed the stage.

“You’re my Mary Magdalene!” a wide-eyed, 22-year-old Andrew Lloyd Webber announced.

“I thought he meant the mother of God,” Elliman, now 69, said in a recent phone conversation, explaining that she had been unfamiliar with the biblical story. “He was like, ‘No, no, no, no, it’s not the mother, it’s the whore.’”