“Feast your eyes. Glut your soul on my accursed ugliness.”The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, Lon Chaney, Ernst Laemmle + Edward Sedgwick, 1925)
Jan
28
Gaslights
An enormous gaslit chandelier dangles over the Paris Opéra audience's heads. DPs: Milton Bridenbecker, Virgil Miller & Charles Van Enger.
Gaslights for the first recorded public street lighting powered by gas, demonstrated in Pall Mall, London, on 28 January, 1807. The introduction of gaslight had a major influence on theatre and opera, including the new Paris Opera (1875), which was lit by no less than 960 gas jets. Thanks to the brilliant light, stage actors could tone down their mannerisms and stage makeup.
– The Phantom
However, in the dark dungeons under the Opéra lives a pitiful creature, doomed to dwell in darkness. His makeup, provided by The Man of a Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney, was both grotesque and eerily real .