In 24 hours, Justin Levine went from happily, furiously working on arrangements for “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” to wondering how to redo half the show after watching a dozen songs evaporate.

“In one day, we lost 12 songs scattered across Act One,” Levine told the Herald. “It was endlessly frustrating, endlessly. It was an exercise in attachment.”

As arranger, orchestrator, and music supervisor, Levine’s job was to build “Moulin Rouge” out of a century of pop songs. The musical, which runs Jan. 16 to Feb. 4 at the Citizens Bank Opera House, features bits and pieces of 70 some songs composed by more than twice as many writers. Very few tunes were off the table and the end result uses works by Nat King Cole, Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, Beyonce, and Adele.

Levine and the production team had to secure the rights to each scrap of music. When they could get the rights, they lost weeks of work.

“When we started playing with (the catalog of pop songs), we weren’t sure if we were going to get to use all of them or not,” Levine said. “Because of the brilliance of our licensing team, we managed to get most of them.”

Based on Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 film, the show features a ton of new songs and arrangements. The reinvention has proved to be a massive hit — it received 14 Tony nominations and won 10 including Best Musical. In a Broadway landscape populated by jukebox musicals, it’s refreshing to see something that isn’t a, well, what exactly is “Moulin Rouge.”

“Unlike most jukebox musicals, the music had to be found to serve the story, as opposed to picking a catalog, knowing what the subject is and what songs you want to use,” Levine said. “This was sort of the reverse of that process.”

Every old song had to be made new. Each lyric had to drive forward the story of wide-eyed young composer Christian and his love for actress Satine, star of a Parisian cabaret at the end of the 1800s.

The most epic example of the production’s innovative storytelling via pop mashups comes in “Elephant Love Medley.” The duet between Christian and Satine has the two flirting by tossing lines back and forth from a score of songs (“Take On Me,” “Love is a Battlefield,” “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Such Great Heights” …).

“When I set out to make the ‘Elephant Love Medley’ it was really important to me that you could read the lyrics through and be able to follow the scene,” Levine said. “Before I even began to explore musically how to transition from song to song, I printed up all the lyrics, cut them up and rearranged them, almost like magnetic poetry. I did that for two days.”

And then he did it again, and again, working and reworking pop’s greatest hits into the show.

Levine and the team spent about three years developing “Moulin Rouge.” It’s a tiny sliver of time considering the herculean feat of putting the sonic and dramatic spectacle together. Of course, it didn’t feel tiny when trying to figure out how to gracefully, impactfully transition from Rick Astley to Lorde to T. Rex.

For tickets and details, visit boston.broadway.com

Justin Levine (Photo Avery Brunkus)

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