I was wondering which broadway musical was performed the most? At
first I thought it was "Cats" (which I thought they stopped running),
but, then I heard somewhere that it was "The Phantom of the Opera" (my
personal all-time favorite), and while talking with a friend, he
actually told me that "Les Miserables" (his all-time favorite) had the
most performances, since it is considered "the world's most popular
musical" (is this true?). Also, which one is the longest-running? I'm
assuming that just because a musical had the most performances doesn't
mean it's the longest running.

P.S.: Do you think there's any chance "Wicked" might overtake all of
them in terms of most performances and popularity? It certainly seems
that way here in Chicago ;-).

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Clarification of Question by dho1115-ga on 04 May 2006 09:37 PDT

Yes, I realized that musicals that do tours outside of broadway may
alter the numbers, so if one musical A has multiple tours, and musical
B has just one tour, then musical A would most likely have more
performances, even though it didn't necessarily play longer. I was
referring to the total number of tours.

According to ibdb.com

Phantom has had 7,613 performances to Apr 30 

Cats closed on 7,485

Les Mis closed on 6,680

Rent has 4,161 to Apr 30

Wicked only has 1,044 to Apr 30

No ... I don't think Wicked will overtake all of them.

(Of course, I could be wrong.)

A Chorus Line  ? Jc superstar ?

Question: when you talk about "most performances" do you mean to count
performances by touring companies (the productions mounted not in New
York's Broadway)?

Most oft-quoted figures about long-running Broadway shows (I think)
usually only count the show's Broadway performances. I don't know that
it'd make a big difference to the rankings, but it's theoretically
possible that if Musical A had, say, 2 touring productions going
alongside the original Broadway show while Musical B only had one
touring production, that might skew the numbers toward the first one.

That said, the shows at the top of the list have had such long runs
that it's difficult to imagine any current musicals lasting that long.
CATS ran on Broadway for just under 18 years; will WICKED do the same?
Maybe, but I'm skeptical...

the official playbill website has all this data in detail.

WEll, Les Misérables has the msot shows in broadway, including tours,
because of its tour around the nation.With over 51 million spectators
to date in 32 countries and two Tony® Awards on Broadway it is the
most performed.

I LUV WICKED