When I was a kid just out of school, I worked a great deal on the Universal Studios lot, on such stuff like Beverly Hills Cop 3, Apollo 13 and Seaquest DSV. On Seaquest, a fun but silly show, I had the luck to walk onto Stage 28 on the lot, where the studio had shot the Original Phantom of the Opera in the mid 1920's, and I was amazed seeing the original opera set still built along the walls of the stage!
Here's a better look inside:
Sorry, it's a little blurry.
Here's another angle:
And here's the set from the actual film:
Look carefully at the balconies. A decade later, one of them would be used to shoot a scene from Dracula:
And eighty years later it would look like this:
And it would look like this during the shooting of the show I worked on while I marveled at the opera set all around our silly sets:
How a kid like me ended up being lucky enough to be on that stage and feel a little bit of Hollywood history around me, I'm still wondering.
So, the stage was torn down recently:
So the stage where the Phantom lived died, but the memories, for me, remain.
Thought all five of you would like to read this:)