User:Wildroot/Opera
- Writing
Lloyd Webber and Schumacher fleshed out Raoul, making him a swashbuckler and romantic hero. The swordfight between the Phantom of Raoul at the cemetery was also created specifically for the film.[1]
- The Phantom's childhood as a sideshow freak, and a final black-and-white coda, which embroiders the musical's more abrupt ending, neatly tying the story up. "In the past, the Phantom was always a ghoul and Christine was always a damsel in distress, like Fay Wray," chumacher said. "I really wanted the Phantom to be more sexy, and Christine to be more formidable. Andrew doesn't pretend to know about movies, and the music is his world. So I made the movie and he reorchestrated the music and worked with the symphony. I wanted to make it part gothic horror, part romance and part action adventure, but I also didn't want to make it too gimmicky. You have to not be embarrassed or shy or cynical and just throw yourself into the romance and embrace it."[2]
- Schumacher retooled the structure of the musical to fit a traditional three-act screen story. "In the show, [crashing] the chandelier ends the first act, which is in the middle of the show, and I said to Andrew, if we crash the chandelier in the middle of the movie and burn down the theater I don't know what I'll do. Are they singing in tents after that?" Some quick thinking on the part of Webber soon solved the problem. "It was his suggestion that maybe we needed to move the chandelier, and I thought that was a really good idea." With that solved, Schumacher faced a number of smaller problems in terms of narrative fluidity; specifically he wanted audiences to understand the characters and their connections with one another more easily. "I thought it was very important to tell the Phantom's back story and everybody's back story, how they got there, and what Miranda Richardson's character's relationship is with the Phantom," he explains. "All of those questions that don't seem to pop up in the musical, but for movie audiences, I think it's important to know a lot of the history of these characters and how they got there." One character in particular, Raoul, faced a complete overhaul, not only to make him a more formidable adversary for the Phantom, but because Patrick Wilson, who plays him, was particularly eager to leap headlong into the film's many action sequences. "I thought it was also important to expand Patrick Wilson's part, because in the show it's very minor, very peripheral," Schumacher says. "[I wanted] to make him a real person and because Patrick's such a stunt stud – he did all his own stunts, he rides the horse bareback, he does the jumps, he did all of the sword fighting himself and he jumps out of the second story balcony when it's on fire." In the original stage production the chandelier is dropped at the end of the first act (just after the reprise of "All I Ask of You"), but it was decided to have it at the end of the film. This change has been incorporated into the new Vegas production of the show.[3]
- Music
- Webber composed 15 new minutes of music. Webber's new music includes the song "Learn to Be Lonely," sung over the end titles by Ms. Driver. Song written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart for the 2004 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. The song is performed by Minnie Driver during the closing credits, and is found on the film's soundtrack. This is the only song in the film or on its soundtrack to feature Minnie Driver, who played Carlotta in the film, actually singing; the character's opera voice was given by Margaret Preece (who played Carlotta in the original musical,The music is played by a 105-piece orchestra, conducted by Simon Lee.[2]