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The 2011 edition of Fantasia had the unenviable task of living up to its 2010 inaugural gala presentation of the restored version of Metropolis, which was a stunning success. The programmers did right by returning with another silent cinema classic, The Phantom of the Opera, and while it could not quite scale the lofty heights of the Metropolis event, it was still a worthy sequel. It was always going to be hard to match the added bonus of presenting a restored version of Metropolis that included about 25 minutes of previously thought to be lost footage. The one area where 2011 topped 2010 was in showing a 35mm print, as opposed to the necessary –because of the restoration– digital projection of Metropolis. The 2011 gala was held in the same splendid location, the prestigious Place des Arts concert hall, and back again was an orchestral score conducted by Montreal’s own musical star, Gabriel Thibadeau, who had already composed a special score for The Phantom of the Opera for an earlier Kino video release, a score that was commissioned by La Cinémathèque québécoise in 1992. Purists may have preferred this year’s score to the more experimental score of 2010, but both scores were dictated by the type of film being accompanied, with the futurist/science fiction scenario of Metropolis being more open to musical experimentation.
Like Metropolis, The Phantom of the Opera has a complicated release and production history. So much so that when people claim to have seen the 1925 silent version, what they have ACTUALLY seen is most likely the silent version of the 1929 re-release with synchronized sound and music. From the many sources that have outlined the film’s production history two that I find reliable are the Silent Era website and the excellent book by Steve Haberman, Silent Screams.
From what I can gather from these and other sources about the complex production history of this film, there is a pedigree of five versions (three 1925 silent releases, screened on January in Los Angeles, April in San Francisco, and August-September in New York), a 1929 domestic synchronized sound re-release and a 1930 international synchronized sound re-release). The version which was screened by Fantasia was a silent version of the 1929 domestic sound...