Titanic is a musical with music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and a book by Peter Stone. It is based on the story of the RMS Titanic which sank on its maiden voyage on April 15, 1912. The musical opened on Broadway on April 23, 1997, in a production directed by Richard Jones; it won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and ran for 804 performances. By coincidence, the musical opened the same year as James Cameron's epic film adaptation of the story, Titanic. Background In 1985, the wreckage of the RMS Titanic was discovered about 370 miles (600 km) south-southeast off the coast of Newfoundland, at a depth of about 12,500 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. This attracted the interest of Maury Yeston, a musical theater composer and lyricist best known for the 1982 Broadway musical Nine. Said Yeston:"What drew me to [a musical about the story of the Titanic] was the positive aspects of what the ship represented – 1) humankind's striving after great artistic works and similar technological feats, despite the possibility of tragic failure, and 2) the dreams of the passengers on board: 3rd Class, to immigrate to America for a better life; 2nd Class, to live a leisured lifestyle in imitation of the upper classes; 1st Class, to maintain their privileged positions forever. The collision with the iceberg dashed all of these dreams simultaneously, and the subsequent transformation of character of the passengers and crew had, it seemed to me, the potential for great emotional and musical expression onstage."Both Yeston and Peter Stone, the show's librettist, knew the idea was an unusual one for a musical: as Yeston explained, "I think if you don't have that kind of daring damn-the-torpedoes, you shouldn't be in this business. It's the safe sounding shows that often don't do well. You have to dare greatly, and I really want to stretch the bounds of the kind of expression in musical theater." Yeston saw the story as unique to turn-of-the-century British culture, with its rigid social class system and romanticizing of progress through technology. "In order to depict that on the stage, because this is really a very English show," said Yeston, "I knew I would have to have a color similar to the one found in the music of the great composers at that time, like Elgar or Vaughan Williams; this was for me an opportunity