:28:01
The final image is a manuscript,
Claudin's modernist symphony,
:28:04
blackening and curling in the flames.
:28:07
Jacoby's time line was skewed.
:28:09
Les Contes d'Hoffmann
premiered at the Opéra Comique
:28:13
in 1881, months after
Offenbach's death, not in 1873.
:28:18
And while the Opéra Comique didn't burn,
:28:20
there was a historical basis
for Jacoby's conflagration.
:28:23
On December 8, 1881 in Vienna,
:28:26
at the second performance
at the Ringtheater,
:28:29
the theatre did burn
with a tremendous loss of life,
:28:32
beginning Tales of Hoffmann's
reputation as a jinxed opera.
:28:37
Time magazine's reviewer
called Phantom's sewer
:28:39
"the best since Les Misérables".
:28:41
In the 1880s,
where antibiotics are unknown,
:28:44
one has to wonder
at Claudin's frolic in the sewage
:28:48
and the effect of bacterial infection
on his festering wounds.
:28:54
The directors of the opera are played
by comic supporting actor Fritz Feld
:28:59
and the rather bulky character actor
J Edward Bromberg.
:29:04
Bromberg was born in Hungary
and came to America as a boy.
:29:09
He first appeared on stage in 1926
at the Provincetown Theatre,
:29:13
and from 1927 to 1930
:29:16
he played opposite Eva LeGallienne
at the New York City Repertory.
:29:20
In Hollywood he made
a career playing villains
:29:23
in pictures like Charlie Chan on
Broadway and Mr Moto Takes a Chance.
:29:27
At Universal, he made
a memorable Dr Lazlo,
:29:30
a Van Helsing-type vampire hunter,
in Son of Dracula.
:29:34
His best role at Universal
was in Robert Siodmak's Phantom Lady,
:29:38
where he played the relentless,
hounding police inspector.
:29:42
Bromberg, a leftist, was called before
HUAC to testify in the early '50s,
:29:47
and was so rattled by the stress that
he died in December 1951 of heart failure.
:29:54
Stage 28, which houses
the Phantom stage,
:29:57
has seen service in the last 75 years
in scores of pictures.