The Music and the Mirror

Stephen Sondheim, in a July, 2017 interview with the Los Angeles Times. (via fuckyeahstephensondheim)

show curtains

I dunno about cool or interesting, but here’s a few:

Ramin Karimloo, who was Raoul in the London production at the time and would later go on to play the Phantom, played Christine’s father in the film.

The wax dummy of Christine at the end of ‘Music of the Night’ is not a dummy; it’s actually Emmy Rossum, in makeup and costume and holding very still.

There are several allusions to Leroux’s original book, such as the horse the Phantom uses (though in Leroux’s book it’s white) and the room full of mirrors Raoul drops into at the end of ‘Why So Silent’.

One noticeable goof is that Christine’s stockings are missing between the end of ‘Music of the Night’ and when she wakes up in ‘I Remember’. A popular fan theory said that this indicated the Phantom had sex with her, or something similar, at the end of ‘Music of the Night’, but the real world explanation appears to be that Emmy Rossum had an allergic reaction to the stockings and had to take them off.

Though interestingly the original script for the movie did have the Phantom going into bed with Christine as the screen fades to black.

Two songs in the 2004 film would later be reused in LND. The song playing over ‘Madame Giry’s Tale’ is later used for ‘The Coney Island Waltz’ in LND, while the song for ‘Journey to the Graveyard’ (an extended version of the one in the stage production) would become ‘Beneath a Moonless Sky’.

Gerard Butler apparently had to wear some kind of butt padding.

He was also apparently meant to do the ‘Final Lair’ sequence shirtless.

Christine is canonically 16 in the film, as her grave says she was born in 1854 and the film takes place in 1870. There’s a theory that her death in 1917 was due to the Spanish influenza pandemic. (Still better than being shot by Meg.)

There are no such things as ballet dormitories in opera houses, so God only knows where Christine lived during her childhood.

In 1870, France was undergoing the Franco-Prussian War and Paris was under siege, yet somehow, so kudos to the Opera Populaire for being open and somehow attracting audiences during this time.

Unlike the stage production, the 2004 film has the Phantom interacting and teaching Christine from a young age. This necessitated a slight change in the lyrics: Meg sings “Who is your great tutor?” instead of “Who is your new tutor” as in the musical (which implies Christine only came to the Phantom’s attention recently).

If you watch ‘Think of Me’ closely, you can see that Emmy Rossum has chewing gum in the back of her mouth. If you look at the audiences, you might also notice some dummies sitting in the audience. (Clearly an allusion to the stage production’s use of dummies in ‘Masquerade’.)

During ‘Masquerade’, a group of dancers on the steps strikes a famous pose from ALW’s musical Cats.

During the section where old Raoul is journeying towards the graveyard, we see a deer hopping along the road. This was definitely not planned by the film crew, but they threw it in anyway, and there was a segment of fans for a while who liked to make theories about its symbolism (knowing full well it was unplanned, so it was very much in the spirit of fun).

Margaret Preece dubbed over Minnie Driver’s Carlotta. I have heard, but do not have it confirmed, that Rohan Tickell dubbed over Piangi. Additionally, some well known London musical theatre actors appeared in the ensemble, including Liesl Dowsett, Tess Cunningham, Jackie Marks, and Annalene Beechey. There are probably many more.

Christine’s ‘Think of Me’ dress is based off the famous Winterhalter portrait of Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

If you listen closely to the long note at the end of ‘Music of the Night’, you can hear Gerard Butler’s last note being looped because it wasn’t long enough.