“He has been my guide in everything; every morning I would go to find him, he would play me a Beethoven sonata,”
“We would sing Gluck’s Armide,”
“Then he would show me around all the famous ruins which I confess did not impress me very much,”
“Mendelssohn is one of those pure souls such as are very rarely found; he believes with conviction in his Lutheran religion, and I would sometimes shock him deeply by making fun of the Bible,”
“I owe to him the only bearable moments I have enjoyed during my stay in Rome.”
Tomas Ambt Kofod had one of the most unique takes I’ve seen on this specific scene. For example, he is the only Phantom I’ve seen to turn and look at Christine before she awakes, smiling gently to himself. Like, “she sleeps, she is safe”.
He is possibly also the first I’ve seen to acknowledge that the candles are supposed to be… well… burning candles. HIS PHANTOM USED IT AS A TOOL for his quill pen. The use of quill pens has varied, but a method to try and harden the tip if it has become too soft is to run it through a flame. And he did that twice, because the writing was so intense, so his pen WOULD have softened. Of course it would.
Then the absolutely quirky and adorable “putting the quill pen in his mouth to free his hands cause he has to study the sheets of music he’s just written” – like in the photo. Then more composing. Then looking like he realized where he was heading, what the score needed, holding them up, a true “eureka” moment, and in that very moment he was unmasked. So the double tragedy was that 1. Christine unmasked him and saw his face, and 2. he was interrupted JUST when he had found the solution. Like, DAMN.
In short, the whole scene was so differently done, and in a good way. I love when actors/actresses are able to “reinvent” a moment while still technically doing the exact same thing as others. I thought I knew exactly how the moment should be performed, I thought I had seen all variations of it. And then… bam.
TheGurlyGamer 