Giovanni Renzo

A deformed musician who lives in the underground passages of the Opéra in Paris falls in love with an opera singer. To conquer her heart and facilitate her success he is not stopped even by blackmail or murder… The Phantom of the Opera, from the novel by Gaston Leroux, became a film in 1925 directed by Rupert Juliano. Since then it has met with great success, repeated by famous directors such as Arthur Lubin, Robert Markovitz, and Dario Argento, and has also been produced as a musical. The first version however remains the most successful, with its sinister and intriguing scenes, filled with pathos and suspense. The composer and pianist Giovanni Rizzo approached the classic silent film enveloping it in his musical poetics. «A vision in black and white that has always accompanied my life: the black and white keys of the piano, the shiny black of the instrument I love. A pretence reality, the one in black and white of films, since the world is in colour, but the white and the black of my piano are real, they are what I see every day. White is the light reflected from the sum of all colours. Black is the hole into which all colours fall. A film recreates an unreal vision of the world in black and white, merging with the reality of my white and black, the one from which the soundtrack that accompanies my life flows».

sunday april 13th 2008 at 6 p.m.
The Savio Theatre

MUSICA AND CINEMA

«THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA»


starring
Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry,
Bernard Siegel, Gibson Gowland, Virginia Pearson

Directed by
Rupert Julian
(b/n USA 1925)

music by
Giovanni Renzo
Philip Glass
Carl Zeller
John S. Zamecnik
Ellen Wright
Richard Heuberger
Luigi Denza
Ludovico Einaudi

arranged
and performed at the piano by
Giovanni Renzo