English
FrançaisThe Phantom of the Opera
- Production : Universal - USA, 1925
- Length : 91 min at 20 frames/second, 79 min at 24 frames/second
- Orchestration : 1st violin, 2nd violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Clarinet, Bassoon, French Horn, Piano/Synthesizer, Percussion, Soprano
Scenario :
In the 19th century, amid the splendour of the Palais Garnier, the Paris opera house, Christine, Christine, the principal soprano, is at the height of her glory. Her success is due to her golden voice but also to the mysterious advice and help which she receives from an « angel », a phantom who lives in the bowels of the building. The man, a horribly disfigured musical genius who lives a life of recluse and who haunts the Opera, loves the young girl with an absolute and exclusive love. When Raoul enters Christine’s life, the phantom is unable to accept the situation…
The Director :
Rupert Julian
Coming to the U.S. at the age of 34, New Zealand-born Rupert Julian started his career as a stage and screen actor touring Australia and New Zealand. Having made his name (and a cool million for Universal) as a dead ringer for Kaiser Wilhelm II in the 1918 film The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin (1918), he turned director.
His output was mostly routine until he was assigned to complete Merry-Go-Round (1923) when director Erich von Stroheim was fired from it. His best known picture was Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera (1925) (though he in turn was fired and replaced before filming was completed), but he soon fell into a professional decline, and after directing only two films after the advent of sound, his career fizzled out.
The Composer :
Gabriel Thibaudeau
Born in 1959 in Beauharnois, Quebec, Gabriel Thibaudeau studied piano at the Vincent d’Indy Music School and composition at the Music Faculty of Montreal University. He also participated in summer schools at the Orford Arts Center where he worked on composition with Iannis Xenakis.
As permanent pianist at the Quebec Film Library since 1988, and recognised as the Canadian specialist in the accompanying of silent movies, he has been invited since 1991 to the Gionarte del Cinema Muto, in Pordenone and since 1992 to the festival Il Cinema Ritrovato, in Bologna, Italy.
Since 1993, among other works for the silent cinema, he has composed a quintet for brass and percussion for the film Straight Shooting, a concerto for piano and chamber orchestra for the film The Fall of the House of Usher, a sextet for the film Foolish Wives, and a Requiem for soprano and piano for the film The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. In association with the Octuor de France he has composed the music to accompany The Man who Laughs, Au Bonheur des Dames, The Iron Mask and Poil de Carotte, as well as adapting for the Octuor de France his orchestral score for The Phantom of the Opera.
