Event pairs silent film with live music
On Oct. 28, St. George’s Church invited the community to travel back in time for a screening of The Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney.
Constructed in 1873, the church’s current structure speaks of the past with its 19th-century architecture, candlelit aisles, and tales of a ghostly pipe organ tuner. Such adherence to the past consequently creates the perfect atmosphere for the broadcast of the 1925 silent film.
To complete the transition back in time, the screening evoked an authentic silent film experience with live musical accompaniment improvised by guest organist William O’Meara on the church’s historic Casavant pipe organ.
O’Meara is an organist and pianist who has performed throughout North America, South America, and Europe. After providing piano accompaniment for a silent film screening at the Royal Ontario Museum, O’Meara produced his own Halloween show in Toronto. Discovering that the process of improvised accompaniment for silent films “was such an outlet for creativity,” O’Meara continued to develop his interest in improvisation and has provided piano and organ accompaniment for over 300 silent films.
“The film is frozen in time,” O’Meara noted, however, improvisation will allow each screening of the film to “be a little bit different depending on how you develop as a musician and what musical languages you want to use.”
At the screening of the film in Guelph, O’Meara—donning his opera cloak—effortlessly captured the mood of the film, transitioning from lighter, jaunty melodies for scenes depicting everyday life at the opera house, to a rising, thundering score for scenes in which the Phantom wreaks his havoc.
In an interview with The Ontarian, O’Meara explained that the hardest part of improvising a score for a silent film is keeping “intellectual control.” He continued with his own adage that improvisation is “a bit like being a really good cook.”
Just as a cook can create a meal out of various unrelated ingredients, “You have all these little tricks in your bag, musical tricks, rhythm and melody, and then you can pull those out and find ways of using them,” O’Meara explained.
Conceived by St. George’s director of music, Dr. Gerry Manning, the performance of The Phantom of the Opera was designed to showcase the recent upgrades made to “Georgina,” the Casavant pipe organ at the church. Proceeds from the performance supported the renovations for the pipe organ, as well as St. George’s Choral Scholars program and the Guelph Connections Concert Series.
Similar to the coalescence of past and present through the upgrading of the pipe organ, the film screening also brought together modern audiences with an experience of the past. O’Meara explained that the atmosphere created when performing in an historic building is the most satisfying because “when you’re [performing] in a building that goes back [as far as the original film] there’s some sort of symbiosis. The two, they kind of compliment each other in that way.”
Through the combination of film, music, and architecture, the St. George’s Church screening of The Phantom of the Opera demonstrated how the past is alive in the present in engaging and inspiring ways.
Photo by Dana Bellamy.