1:05:03
"really the father of the prima donna".
1:05:06
Arthur Lubin made it a point of honour
not to screen the silent film,
1:05:10
and he never saw the Lon Chaney picture.
1:05:13
Art director Alex Golitzen
did screen the Chaney film
1:05:16
several times during preproduction.
1:05:32
While the chandelier
at the Paris Opera has never fallen,
1:05:35
there was historic precedent
for this incident -
1:05:37
one which hovered over audiences
1:05:39
in the years preceding
electrification of public buildings.
1:05:43
One event in the musical world,
possibly apocryphal,
1:05:46
concerns the premiere of Haydn's
Symphony No 96 in London in 1794.
1:05:52
The chandelier is said to have given way,
1:05:54
but with the audience seated toward the
front of the orchestra, no one was hurt.
1:05:59
Hence the name the "Miracle" Symphony
that's attached to the work ever since.
1:06:04
Nearly 100 years later, closer to home for
Leroux, was a tragedy at the Paris Opera.
1:06:09
On May 20 1896,
1:06:11
the first act of Hellé was ending.
1:06:13
The singer, Madame Caron, was
about to perform an encore of her aria
1:06:18
when there was a flash of light
and a cloud of smoke over the auditorium.
1:06:21
The singers held their places on stage
1:06:24
as the audience in the gallery
stumbled and bolted,
1:06:27
women having to be prevented from
jumping from the tiers.
1:06:30
The orchestra and stalls members
had no idea that something was amiss.
1:06:34
Only about six people
were slightly hurt in the stampede,
1:06:37
and all seemed well
until a bloodied girl appeared,
1:06:40
crying that her mother was buried
in wreckage on the fourth tier.
1:06:44
It transpired that
an electric cable had caught fire,
1:06:47
melting a steel hawser attached
to one of the chandelier's counterweights.
1:06:52
The 770-kilo weight -
1:06:54
nearly 350 pounds -
1:06:56
had dropped directly on
the 50-year-old woman, a concierge,