‘Phantom of the Opera’ hits the big screen and orchestra pit

By Kooper Shagena

koopershagena@gmail.com

One night, Jane Linde Capistran, associate conductor of the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra, sat and drank wine with her friends: “Jennifer Tackling, the associate concertmaster, and Elise Buffett Nelson, who’s the principal cellist,” she recalls. “We thought, ‘It would be fun if the symphony could do a Halloween program to engage with the community.’”

They had done a Halloween show in the previous year with just the quartet, called “SpookTAKular,” where they performed several pieces at the TAK music venue in Dilworth. Minnesota.

“We did a show for the younger kids and they got to march around in their costumes, and then we did a scarier show for the adults. We had different film clips of movies and such, with all Halloween tunes,” Capistran recalls fondly. The trio of friends reminisced back and forth about that event for a time, when a new idea suddenly came up.

“Elise goes, ‘It would be neat if we could play for a film,” Capistran explains.

Capistran soon mentioned this idea in a visit with Margie Bailey, the former executive director of the Fargo Theatre. Bailey put her in touch with the professor of film studies at Concordia College, Greg Carlson.

“I just followed this chain around, arrived with him, and right away he said, ‘Phantom of the Opera,’” says Capistran. An original silent film produced in 1925, it is 100 years old this year.

It will be shown in the downtown Fargo Theatre, which also is also very near its 100th anniversary, having opened in 1926. Emily Beck, the current executive director of the Fargo Theatre, says that the film will be shown in Theatre 1 — the oldest and largest theatre in the building.

Before the release of “talkies” around 1927-1929, silent films were just accompanied by an organist and occasionally a full “film” orchestra, if the theater was large enough, which helped communicate the plot and emotion of the film. This is how the iconic Fargo Theatre began, showing silent cinema in black and white, with just a solo organist.

Mysteriously, the original 1925 score of “The Phantom”, written by a fellow named Joseph Carl Breil, has been lost. It accompanied the film as it was originally released in theaters, but it was never saved to any records and has forever disappeared into the well of history. So, Capistran herself has curated the soundtrack for this performance.

“What I’m doing is called a compiled score,” she explains. “I just use existing pieces of music. In building the score, I wanted to use some familiar scary music, so that the audience can relate to some of the pieces.”

The full 72-minute film will be accompanied by the live orchestra, playing a variety of public-domain pieces that were composed in and around 1925. It’s a very technical musical feat for Capistran and the musicians.

“My task is to conduct the orchestra and make sure I have all the timings right when I see the action on the film,” explains Capistran. “I’ve been practicing a little bit, and I just have to keep doing it over and over again, so I really know the cues.”

The musicians must also transition seamlessly from one piece to the next, just as recorded movie soundtracks do, which is not easy to accomplish when playing live.

“It’ll be very challenging,” Capistran says. “But I think it’s going to be quite exciting, too.”

This 1925 silent film was taken from the original book, “The Phantom of the Opera,” written by French author Gaston Leroux in 1910. The version of the story that is usually most familiar to people today is the 1986 musical of the same name by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with Webber’s wife, Sarah Brightman, as Christine, and “Flowers for Algernon” actor Micheal Crawford as the Phantom. This 1986 Broadway production is where the iconic “Phantom of the Opera” theme music (buuuuuuum, bum bum bum bum buuuuuum!) comes from.

“The program will start out with the big theater organ, played by Andrew Steinberg, who’s a faculty member at Concordia,” says Capistran.

The quiet darkness in the old theater will suddenly begin to vibrate with the imposing and eerie notes of the organ. Steinberg will open with Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and go right into the “Phantom” theme as the whole orchestra joins in. The audience will be able to watch Steinberg and the organ lower slowly out of sight into the pit with the orchestra, and the movie will begin on the screen.

The organ to be played is also a tribute to film history. It is a 4/32 Wurlitzer, meaning it has four complete keyboards and 32 sets of pipes. This grand instrument has been evolving since the Fargo Theatre’s opening in 1926, when it had just two keyboards and 7 sets of pipes. Red River Theatre Organ Society (R.R.T.O.S.), the entity that owns and maintains the organ, states that “the organ was last used on March 26, 1948, for Good Friday services, after which it remained dormant for the next 25 years.”

It sat, unused, in Theatre 1’s pit until 1973, when the owners of the theatre agreed to have it restored. “There were many dead notes, out of tune pipes, and a dead three-phase blower motor,” explains Dylan Thiele, vice president of the R.R.T.O.S.

It has since been expanded again and again, all the way up to its current grandeur in 2017. The original 1926 Style E Special organ console is still around and is on display upstairs in the Mezzanine of the Fargo Theatre today.

Capistran says there is some rare and largely unheard-of orchestra music in store for the audience, which is another detail that will make this performance special. Barring any silent movie buffs, no one will have heard these unique pieces before.

“There’s this cool piece written by Gaston Borsch,” she says. “He actually composed pieces for what they called a ‘theatre orchestra’. He composed them for these very things.”

The expertise that had to come together to produce this exclusive screening and performance of “The Phantom of the Opera” is a tribute to the talent within the Fargo-Moorhead community. It is to be a blend of the rich history that is preserved in downtown Fargo with an icon of early horror filmography, and brought to life with the power of music.

“For those people that are really interested in film and music, this is a great combination,” Capistran beams, “To be in that theatre is really quite a special thing.”

She says the Fargo area is dear to her in this regard. Besides the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra, there are also choral groups, vocal groups and the Lake Agassiz Wind Ensemble that help keep the arts alive.

“I think we’re really fortunate to have the three universities that supply so many opportunities for the arts,” Capistran says. “And then organizations, like all the theatre groups in town. There’s just so many things that adults can participate in and hopefully bring their children to. I really appreciate Fargo for that.”

Capistran will be conducting in the pit of Theatre 1 in the Fargo Theatre on the evening of Saturday, October 25for the one and only performance of this event. Tickets can be purchased on the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra website, fmsymphony.org.

IF YOU GO:

“The Phantom of the Opera”

Saturday, October 25, 7 p.m.

Fargo Theatre, 314 N Broadway

Tickets: https://tinyurl.com/ytt9yted