I just love it.īut far and above that is the opera the filmmakers cobbled together from the music of Chopin, Amour et Gloire.

“Mag der himmel euch vergeben,” which I think is the finale of Act III, comes near the beginning of the film, and for awhile it was one of my musical obsessions. This movie begins with the Paris Opera performing Martha, now little known but at one time such a standard part of the repertoire that it had to be performed annually. for that BAGGAGE!”) And it seems so incongruous to see Hume Cronyn cast in such a meaningless throwaway part when he went on to achieve such fame (and had already started to do so on the Broadway stage. (“Why, I was drugged! And you ALL know by who.

Jane Farrar as the wicked soprano Biancarolli scintillates with evil. Nelson Eddy is fantastic the trailer says that it is his “most vigorous performance.” I adore Suzanne Foster, one of the birdlike sopranos of the period. Why my favorite? Well, not because of Claude Rains (much as I love him), and not because of the traditional Hollywood liberties taken with the plot. Without question, though, my favorite is the 1943 film with Claude Rains as the Phantom, Nelson Eddy, Suzanne Foster as Christine, Hume Cronyn as the second detective, and Gladys Blake, who also shows up in The Women and in These Glamour Girls as the cashier at the dance hall. There was a TV version with Charles Dance as the Phantom. The original film version with Lon Chaney remains a classic of the silent era I’ll never forget seeing it in college with a live pipe organ accompaniment. There are many filmed and staged versions of Gaston Leroux’s masterpiece of horror, the novel Phantom of the Opera.

Charles dance phantom of the opera cast