Phantom of the Opera Revisited

Eric McNaughton ventures down to the cobwebbed catacombs beneath the Paris Opera House to unmask his namesake – Erik the Phantom!

The Paris Opera House – centre of culture in the city of culture! Beneath this imposing edifice lie the dungeons and torture chambers of medieval Paris. In these catacombs dwells a spectre – Erik the Phantom. The only person to have seen the Phantom is scene shifter Joseph Buquet (Bernard Seigel). “His eyes are so deep” says Buquet, “that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. All you see is two big black holes, as in a dead man’s skull. His skin which is stretched across his bones like a drumhead, is not white but a dirty yellow”.

Erik the Phantom (Lon Chaney) lives only for the music and his ‘angel’ Christine Daae (Mary Philbin). Box 5 at the Opera House is always left empty for the Opera Ghost. When the new managers of the Opera House let out the Phantom’s box and refuse to let Christine sing instead of La Carlotta (Virginia Pearson), he wreaks a terrible revenge. As he sends the giant crystal chandelier crashing into the audience he tells the managers: “Behold! She is singing to bring down the chandelier!”.

Amid the confusion the Phantom spirits Christine away to his subterranean lair. There he plays her his own composition “Don Juan Triumphant”. Christine is intrigued by the masked composer, and while he is at the organ she rips off his mask. Recoiling in horror at the deaths head before her, the Phantom cries “Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my accursed ugliness!”. After promising to keep his secret she is allowed to return to the surface.