Having stolen a prop mask, and the master keys to the opera, Claudin begins to orchestrate his plan of turning his beloved Christine into a star and if he has to drug and murder the opera’s prima donna ( Jane Farrar) more’s the pity for her and for else anyone who stands in his way. Meanwhile, Christine has her own problems in the form of two rival suitors, Police Inspector Raoul Dubert ( Edgar Barrier) and the Opera’s chief baritone Anatole Garron ( Nelson Eddy), but neither of these two chuckleheads realized that Christine had already placed them both in the Friend Zone. This may seem bad at the outset, because who likes really acid burns, but it does land him a nice place in the sewers, one that is located conveniently below the opera house and thus give him easy access to the beautiful Christine. “I did what?”Īfter a tragic misunderstanding that leads to him murdering a music publisher, revolving around a piece of music that Claudin had composed and had hoped its publishing would allow him to continue funding Christine’s lessons, this “mix-up” not only results in the murder but Claudin also gets a face full of acid and has to flee for his life. This 1943 movie follows the trials and tribulations of violinist Erique Claudin ( Claude Rains) who is dismissed from his job once it is discovered that one of his hands is suffering from arthritis, unfortunately, Claudin had been anonymously spending his twenty years’ worth of earnings on singing lessons for the beautiful Christine Dubois ( Susanna Foster), who he has been secretly devoted to all those years, and now he can’t even pay the rent for his crummy apartment. There have been many adaptations of Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera, from Lon Chaney’s brilliant silent version in 1925 to Andrew Llyod Webber’s Broadway musical smash, but in 1943 Universal Pictures took their own shot at this classic tale, just so they could add another star in their line-up of Universal Monsters, this one with Claude Rains as the disfigured maestro obsessed with a beautiful girl.Īside from a masked man running around the Paris Opera House, and his obsession with a young soprano, there isn’t much similar to that of Gaston Leroux’s novel and what we see in this film, at best, this film can be called a “loose adaptation” of the source material.
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