The Phantom of The Opera, taonga pūoro and the NZ origins of a classic silent film

The Spinoff

16-05-2025

100 years ago, a New Zealander was the first person to bring The Phantom of The Opera to the screen. Lyric Waiwiri-Smith attends a centennial screening of the iconic silent film with a special musical accompaniment.
On the roof of the Palais Garnier, in a film reel drenched in blue, Christine Daaé (Mary Philbin) and Raoul de Chagney (Norman Kerry) grasp each other without ever sharing a kiss (it was the 1920s, after all). They've just witnessed the Phantom (Lon Chaney) terrify the crowds of the Bal-de-Masque, fled through the labyrinthe opera house and are plotting their escape – until whistling of a taonga pūoro welcomes the image of the Phantom, clinging to a statue of Apollo, his head thrown back in agony and arms desperately reaching towards his object of obsession.
The 1925 adaptation (happy centennial!) of Gaston Leroux's tragic-romance, The Phantom of The Opera is a classic of the silent film genre, campy in its theatrical excess and both hilarious and haunting in its subtle, archaic horror which leans on the simple thrills of a darkened dungeon and the deformed face of the Phantom. It's a story most well-known as an Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical, so if the 'silent' part freaks you out, rest assured that most reissues of this original film actually do include sound.
But if you want a truly immersive experience, you should hope there's a good community of film buffs and some pretty talented musicians in your neighbourhood. On Monday and Tuesday night, the Wellington Film Society hosted a screening of the film alongside a live musical accompaniment composed by Pōneke's Ruby Solly (Kāi Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe), Seth Boy and Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa (Ngāti Porou) – a perfect blending of two artistic mediums which brought the magic and mayhem of the Phantom's opera house to The Embassy theatre.
In the absence of sound, the appeal of The Phantom of The Opera leans heavily on beautiful wide shots of dancers floating through the Palais Garnier, title-cards with old-timey words like 'ere' (the best being: 'feast your eyes, glut your soul on my accursed ugliness!') and exaggerated physical performances, but namely Chaney, whose grotesque but most of all dramatic Phantom still endures. So, when you finally do bring sound into the equation, it's able to expand all of these aspects and more.
Solly, Best and Schaverien-Kaa's composition flowed so well in tandem with the film that, if you closed your eyes, you'd think all of the pieces were built together from the beginning. The music moved with ease, underscoring the comedic moments with musical punchlines, to something operatic, then haunting. And at the end of the ballet scene which opens the film, as the actors sitting in the Palais Garnier applauded, so did we – it was nice to have a moment to appreciate the ability of three people to create really transcendental music.
And because it's their composition, Solly, Best and Schaverien-Kaa were able to take some creative liberties with storytelling through their music. When Carlotta (Virginia Pearson) took the opera stage to perform as Marguerite, Solly missed her notes and skipped over beats, letting a terrible vibrato echo around the theatre (I must note that when she vocalised along with Christine, Solly sounded so beautiful alongside the cello she was playing that, for a few minutes, I couldn't believe she was doing both things at once).
When Christine discovers the Phantom playing 'Don Juan Triumphant', he's not the skilled composer you see in Andre Lloyd Webber's production – it was a great insinuation that maybe the Phantom was just a fraud, a nobody trapped in the dungeons forever.
But the best part of it all was the use of taonga pūoro. The whistles that drifted through the theatre spelled the entrance of the Phantom and his no-good hijinks, or set the scene for the cold, eerie dungeons. It felt really special to have this instrument embedded into the composition, and it was also a good reminder of Aotearoa's connection to the film.
The whole thing is obviously all very French, but the film's director Rupert Julian is a New Zealander. He was born in Whangaroa as Percy Hayes (later changing his name when he became a touring actor), lived in Whangārei and Auckland, worked as a barber on Karangahape Road and fought in the Boer War before being convinced to join the stage, and eventually make the move to Hollywood.
The Phantom of The Opera is undoubtedly Julian's most iconic contribution to film, but it's his leading man – Lon 'the man of a thousand faces' Chaney – who supposedly led the brunt of the film's creative work. Julian was famously pompous and difficult to work with, and often crew members sided with Chaney, whose director often refused to speak with him – instead, the film's cinematographer Charles Van Engler acted as the go-between messenger for the two divas. It was a strange outcome as Julian, after receiving the script, declared: 'Lon Chaney, or it can't be done!'
Julian's magnum opus became Universal's longest project at the time – while many films were able to be shot in two weeks, Julian spent six months in pre-production, and eleven in production, working with a cast and crew of hundreds. Delays would be caused by Julian continuously reshooting Philbin's scenes, and the use of experimental Technicolour – you can see those beautiful splashes of colour seep through in the Bal-de-Masque scene.
So, describing it as a New Zealand film would probably be a stretch of the imagination as long as the Seine. But it was nice to step into a version of the film that felt like it could only be enjoyed in Aotearoa.