Classical Music, Naturally Romantic

Film Art Festival 2025

Saturday, 10/05/2025 / 05:00 PM - 12:00 AM / Mecklenburg State Theater

The Phantom of the Opera

The 34th Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Filmkunstfest is not to be missed: the silent film concerts. Following the success of previous years, most recently with Harold Lloyd's Skyscraper of all things, the Mecklenburg State Theatre and the Filmkunstfest MV are once again working closely together to put on a film concert. At the 34th FILMKUNSTFEST MV, there will be a revival of a classic film by Rupert Julian from 1925, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary: The Phantom of the Opera. The silent film will be accompanied by the Mecklenburg State Orchestra, conducted by Kapellmeister Martin Schelhaas. Film and live music can be experienced again this year in the main auditorium of the Mecklenburg State Theatre.
In the Paris Opera: a mysterious phantom is lurking unnoticed behind the scenes and walls of the sprawling building in order to get his favorite, the still young singer Christine, a leading role. In fact, the terror goes so far that Christine is allowed to sing the coveted soprano. But the phantom is unable to win her heart, as it soon belongs to the nobleman Raoul. When their affection becomes clear, the Phantom finally abducts the young talent into the vast catacombs of the building. The film adaptation of Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel is also the one that comes closest to the book. Lon Chaney - the man with a thousand faces - fitted the role of the Phantom so perfectly that director Rupert Julian declared when reading the script: "Lon Chaney - or it can't be done." The Universal production was a complete success. Especially the scenes in which the Phantom can be seen unmasked made the audience shudder. The 1995 restored film copy contains the famous sequences in Technicolor with original coloring and color effects.
The Phantom of the Opera is the music composed by the British musician Roy Budd before his untimely death at the age of 47 and with which the brilliant jazz musician(Get Carter) reinvented himself. It became Roy Budd's masterpiece, a detailed orchestrated, thematically rich score in the late romantic style. The main theme, first introduced by an organ, perfectly reflects the morbid romanticism of the story, the Phantom's obsession with the opera singer Carlotta, who is trying to escape the clutches of the disfigured musician. The theme for the relationship between these two people, which runs throughout the music, is also simultaneously abysmal and beautiful in tone, fragile and oppressive, like a variation on Wagner's Tristan and Isolde.

This extraordinary cultural project takes place in collaboration with the European Film Philharmonic and is financially supported by the Sparkasse Mecklenburg-Schwerin Foundation.

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