The Philharmonia Orchestra has published a video podcast in which Carl Davis talks about the process of writing his score for Rupert Julian’s The Phantom of the Opera (1925), with Lon Chaney as the Phantom. It’s an illuminating insight into Davis’ ideas and inspirations, with plenty of clips and music extracts.
The Philharmonia Orchestra is presenting a screening of the film with live orchestral accompaniment and Davis conducting on Sunday 27 March at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s Southbank, starting at 3.00pm.
The Bioscope 
Thanks for posting this. Very interesting. I interviewed Carl Davis recently in Paris. It is available here: http://annhardingstreasures.blogspot.com/2011/02/carl-davis-interview-part-i.html and http://annhardingstreasures.blogspot.com/2011/02/carl-davis-interview-part-ii.html. He talks about scoring Napoléon and Chaplin films. Davis is my favourite silent film musician – by far.
Ah!!, certainly Herr Davis wrote and conducted many and wonderful scores that this Herr Graf appreciate very much, having very good memories, among others, of the “Thames Silents” series in UK.
Aww c’mon Luke, if we’re going to play the pretentious auteurists game, lets call it Rupert Julian, Ernest Laemmle, Lon Chaney and Edward Sedgwick’s PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. That picture had too many megaphoners behind the camera to really give all the credit to just one. Funny, to me it’s still Gaston Leroux’s PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
Fair comment. I’m no auteurist – but I am a film cataloguer by training, and I like to cite films accordingly to archive cataloguing rules – on-screen title (for the original release version), country of production, year of release, and credited director. Then again, I’ve just been reading a history of art direction in British film, and it was so refreshing to find every film cited according to its art director rather than its director e.g. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (Charles D. Hall, Elmer Sheeley). But maybe that’s still being auteurist, just with a different hat on.