The Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra will screen the 1925 silent horror film The Phantom of the Opera with live orchestral accompaniment at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights on Saturday, with showtimes set for 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. The performance pairs the orchestra with the church's historic Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ, which contains 4,162 pipes, for a Halloween-week screening that invites attendees to wear costumes.
According to the Brooklyn Paper, the film stars Lon Chaney Sr. as a disfigured composer who lives beneath the Paris Opera House and becomes obsessed with Christine, a young soprano whose career he attempts to control. The score was arranged by Rodney Sauer, who drew from a collection of music once used in a silent movie theater in Colorado, held at the American Music Research Center in Boulder. Sauer said the score could have been heard, though it was not heard, on the movie's first run, the Brooklyn Paper reports.
A Landmark Organ Meets a Century-Old Horror Classic
Plymouth Church's organ was built in 1937 and incorporates pipes from the church's original 1866 instrument, per the Brooklyn Paper's reporting. The instrument, built by the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company under tonal director G. Donald Harrison, features four manuals, 59 ranks, and those 4,162 pipes, according to Plymouth Church. Harrison designed the organ in his influential “American Classic” style, and it underwent a major restoration in the mid-1990s.
For Saturday's event, Sauer will personally conduct the chamber ensemble and play piano alongside guest organist Gregory D'Agostino on the Aeolian-Skinner organ, according to The Curriculum. Sauer also directs the Colorado-based Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, where he specializes in compiling silent movie scores from authentic 1920s photoplay music collections — short compositions categorized by emotion or dramatic situation that theater musicians once used to assemble live accompaniments on the fly.
Phil Nuzzo, artistic director and conductor of the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra, said the presentation gives audiences a rare opportunity to experience a silent-film classic with a live orchestral score, per the same report. He added that the performance is an ideal way to begin Halloween week and will create a haunting and electrifying atmosphere.
Brooklyn's Only Resident Chamber Orchestra Keeps a Halloween Ritual Alive
Founded in 2002 by Nuzzo, the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra is the borough's only resident professional chamber orchestra that presents a regular subscription season, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The group has made silent-film accompaniment something of a Halloween tradition: it previously performed Sauer's score for The Phantom of the Opera during Halloween week in 2024 at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn, a prior engagement detailed on the orchestra's Ticket Tailor listing.
Plymouth Church itself carries deep historical weight beyond its organ. Constructed in 1849–1850 in Brooklyn Heights and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, the church served as a key station on the Underground Railroad under founding pastor Henry Ward Beecher, per Wikipedia's entry on the landmark. Known historically as the “Grand Central Depot” of the Underground Railroad, the sanctuary also hosted famous abolitionist speeches and mock slave auctions.
Part of a Nationwide Centennial for a Silent Horror Icon
The Phantom of the Opera entered the public domain in the United States in 1953 after Universal Pictures did not renew its copyright registration during the required 28th year after publication, Wikipedia notes. The film was later selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry in 1998, recognizing it as culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. Chaney devised his own iconic, terrifying makeup for the disfigured Phantom, a transformation that earned him the nickname “The Man of a Thousand Faces.”
Brooklyn's screening lands amid a broader wave of centennial tributes to the 1925 film. Arts organizations across the country, including the Cleveland Silent Film Festival in September 2025, staged their own live-score presentations marking the film's 100th anniversary, according to Cleveland Classical. Hoodline previously reported that the full-length score premiered in February 2025 in a co-presentation with Austin Classical Guitar.
The Plymouth Church screening is a Halloween-week event in New York City. Plymouth Church is located at 57 Orange St. in Brooklyn Heights, and tickets for Saturday's screenings cost $40 and are available through the orchestra's ticketing page.
