The Phantom of the Opera

[stephen_speicher]

I didn't really like Butler's singing -- it sounds like he doesn't quite have the range for the score ...

I have seen the movie three times now, and I have been listening to the movie soundtrack over and over. I continue to appreciate and enjoy Gerard Butler's performance as the Phantom. Butler's voice does not reflect the years of training of a professional singer (he was an honors law student), but the emotion he communicates more than makes up for his lack of finesse and expertise.

I purchased and listened to the recording by the original Canadian cast of the stage play, with Colm Wilkinson playing the role of the Phantom, and in my opinion Butler's performance was superior. (And this from a great fan of Colm Wilkinson, whom I have previously praised for his ability to communicate emotions musically.) Wilkinson's voice is most certainly superior to Butler's in every technical sense, but the strong raspy quality Butler lends while emphasizing the underlying feelings of the Phantom, overcomes his lack of technical excellence. In fact, a lot of Butler's performance is closer to lyrical speech than to actual singing.

I have ordered the Michael Crawford performance of the Phantom from the original London cast of the stage play, and I will compare his performace to Butler's when the CD arrives. I know that many lavish great praise on Crawford's performance, but I will wait till I hear it myself and then compare.

- but Emmy, conversely, was fanstastic.  Great, wonderful tone on those high notes.  Gorgeous...and not just her voice 

I am so impressed by Emmy Rossum, and I look forward to future work from her as she matures. I understand she played a young Audrey Hepburn in a TV movie about the actress, and that I would really like to see.

[RationalBiker]

I have ordered the Michael Crawford performance of the Phantom from the original London cast of the stage play, and I will compare his performace to Butler's when the CD arrives. I know that many lavish great praise on Crawford's performance, but I will wait till I hear it myself and then compare.

I took my wife, son and his girlfriend to see the movie and I thoroughly enjoyed it! The two leads were definitely very strong in their roles, but after years of listening to the Original London Cast, I still favor Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman.

To my surprise however, I was most satisfied with Minnie Driver's performance as Carlotta. She brings out Carlotta's melodramatic condescension so well.

There was one thing that seemed odd to me. I never read the book so I don't know which is more accurate. In the London musical, the chandelier comes down and later the stagehand is hung to death. In the movie the events were reversed. Anyone know why this change was made?

[Durandal]

There was one thing that seemed odd to me.  I never read the book so I don't know which is more accurate.  In the London musical, the chandelier comes down and later the stagehand is hung to death.  In the movie the events were reversed.  Anyone know why this change was made?

Because in the stage version there are two acts, and the falling chandelier is the climax of the first. However, the movie is one continuous show, and the falling chandelier in the middle of the movie would have screwed with the story's momentum.

[stephen_speicher]

I took my wife, son and his girlfriend to see the movie and I thoroughly enjoyed it! The two leads were definitely very strong in their roles, but after years of listening to the Original London Cast, I still favor Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman.

I am glad you enjoyed the movie. I have been listening carefully to the Crawford/Brightman recording and I was quite pleasantly surprised at the beauty of their performance. Crawford has a magnificent voice and communicates a sense of stronger emotion that was missing from the Colm Wilkinson performance I listened to previously. Brightman's voice just blew me away; a real operatic songbird. But I must say that I still favor the movie renditions of Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum, Butler especially. Butler's voice is nowhere near the technical level of Crawford, but he is a real actor and his acting lends a dramatic emphasis to the role that overshadows what I hear in the other renditions. Similarly with Rossum, whose young innocence is more believable to me. With that said, I would have loved to see the stage version of the play with Crawford and Brightman, if nothing else than to see what they look like in their roles.

I thought about my reaction to this for a while, entertaining the thought that maybe I was just emotionally attached to the first version I saw -- the movie. I have seen that sort of reaction in others. But I do not think that is the case. My most favorite piece of music is Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, which I discovered when I was quite young. I listened to the recording over and over, lost and enraptured in the music every time. Then, many years afterwards, I discovered Emil Gilels' performance of the piece, and I put my original record away and never listened to it again. So, I am certainly not reluctant to give up my previous judgment for a better one, and though I thoroughly enjoyed the Original London Cast performance, I still greatly prefer the soundtrack from the movie.

To my surprise however, I was most satisfied with Minnie Driver's performance as Carlotta.  She brings out Carlotta's melodramatic condescension so well.

My first impression was that perhaps she was overacting, but it soon became clear in the context of the story that she really hit the mark. Driver is far from one of my favorite actresses, but I agree that she did a wonderful job in the movie.

There was one thing that seemed odd to me.  I never read the book so I don't know which is more accurate.  In the London musical, the chandelier comes down and later the stagehand is hung to death.  In the movie the events were reversed.  Anyone know why this change was made?

This is very strange. I just looked at the Libretto which comes with the two-CD Original London Cast recording, and it indicates that at the end of Act One the "chandelier falls to the stage at Christine's feet." In the screenplay the chandelier wreaks utter destruction near the end of the movie, not simply "falling to the stage" as in the stage version. But I fail to see how the stage version is self-consistent, considering that at the opening of the play the auctioneer says "this is the very chandelier which figures in the famous disaster." Those words are more consistent with the movie version than with the stage version.

Edited January 18, 2005 by stephen_speicher

[RationalBiker]

Because in the stage version there are two acts, and the falling chandelier is the climax of the first.  However, the movie is one continuous show, and the falling chandelier in the middle of the movie would have screwed with the story's momentum.

I'm not sure how I see that a hanging man would be any less dramatic (in terms of momentum) than a falling chandelier but perhaps that is open to interpretation. In fact, I would make the argument that the falling chandelier offers more foreshadowing to the impending doom that awaits should they continue to disregard the Phantom's instructions. Property damage followed by death is a better (IMO) build up than vice versa. (Did I miss anyone getting crushed by the chandelier?)

However, to clarify my main inquiry, which version is more consistent with the book (if anyone here has read it)?

[Volens]

Aspects of the story and the larger than life way it is told remind me of Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris and Rostand's "Cyrano."

The musical is based on the a late sensation of Romanticism, Gaston Leroux's 1911 novel "The Phantom of the Opera" (it seems that virtually all these works were written before the end of the First World War, just as Ayn Rand described in "What is Romanticism?"). I saw the similarity to "Notre Dame de Paris" as well, and it seems that the relationship is not entirely accidental:

"Despite his possessiveness and jealousy, the Phantom is still a heart-breaking character, and the writer of the novel Gaston Leroux had said at its publication in 1911 that he had been inspired by Victor Hugo's hunchback".

Phantom vs Phantom

Part of what saddened me when watching the movie was its Hugoesque quality, the obvious veneration of genius combined with the premise that genius is impotent in matters of the heart. In spite of this, I probably enjoyed it more than any movie I have seen for a long time (and this includes even movies that I have more respect for, such as the Fritz Lang movies and Andrew Niccol's "Gattaca"). This is because 1) Fritz Lang movies often contain a metaphysically collectivist element (the Burugundian feudal ties in "Siegfried", the anthill conception of society in "Metropolis") that clashes with my sense of life, and 2) Andrew Niccol's movies, while intellectually very brilliant and egoistic, lack (so far) the grand-scale spectacle and visuals required for true Romanticism.

[Free Capitalist]

*Spoilers*

I have to add my very enthusiastic praise for the Phantom of the Opera movie. It was amazing, movies as they ought to be! I've seen it twice already, and can't get enough of it, or its characters. At first, when I was pre-conditioned by this thread, I felt apprehensive that the actors would not live up to their roles, seeing as how the original roles were created for voices of an opera caliber.

In fact, in the beginning of the movie, when Emily Rossum is this simple chorus girl who has to stand in for an opera singer, I was afraid to be disappointed, that she wouldn't be able to fill the shoes (since I knew she was singing her own voice, while Minnie Driver was dubbed by an opera singer). After all, she's just an actress, even if one with a pleasant voice, so what can she do as compared to a real opera singer. I was amazed to learn that she's not an "just an actress", but an opera singer herself[/i, having had seven years in the New York Metropolitan Opera under her belt, and having sung with the likes of Pavarotti and Placido Domingo!! Acting is just something she does now, on the side ( ), waiting for her voice to fully mature around the age of 25.

So my apprehensions about disappointment over song quality were totally unfounded, and everything else was more than I hoped it would be. All characters were larger than life, and actors were superb. Gerald Butler was the hauntingly charming Phantom, very much larger than life. Minnie Driver was completely hilarious, and stole every scene she was in... "Andiamo!!"

I highly recommend this movie to everyone - it doesn't disappoint, and is Romantic art at its best.

Not only does it do its task well, it also dispels many historical myths. If you, or anyone else you know, think that the Victorian era was an effete culture, filled with stuffy men and repressed women, then this movie is just the antidote needed. It's just like "Kate and Leopold" in that sense, defending the Victorian culture as admirable.