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A madman loose in an opera house is the background for Charlie Chan to investigate a double murder of leading singers in Charlie Chan At The Opera. Son Lee Chan played by Keye Luke even gets in the act as a member of the chorus with his fraternity buddies.

Boris Karloff is the madman, but if I had gone through what he had been through I'm sure I would have become unhinged myself. Some years back Karloff was trapped in a burning opera house by his cheating wife and her tenor lover. He was presumed dead and burned up, but in fact has been an amnesiac patient in a mental asylum. A glance at a newspaper story about the opera brought his memory and a resolve to escape the asylum and seek out his tormentors.

This probably was Karloff's way of playing and not playing the Phantom Of The Opera. As he was in the Frankenstein films or playing The Mummy, Karloff is both a frightening yet pitiable figure. He truly steals this film from Warner Oland as Charlie Chan.

As for Oland he has to solve a pair of murders that occur while Karloff is on the loose. In that he has to work with thick as a brick police sergeant William Demarest. In fact Demarest makes a few racial remarks in Oland's direction, but in the end he's a convert to the wisdom of Chinese parables.

This is one of the best Charlie Chan features and one of the best of the Oland Chan films which were given much better production than later when the series moved to Monogram.

Of all the mystery detectives who made their mark on the big screen, the most easily recognizable was Charlie Chan. Originally created by Earl Derr Biggers, he went on to star in some thirty or forty episodes, Although Warner Oland appears in this film " Charlie Chan, at the Opera " this would become his last as Sidney Tolar would later replace him. Director H. Bruce Humberstone makes much of the great talent he assembles when the late great Boris Karloff plays Gravelle. Keye Luke from 'Kung Fu' fame plays Charlie Chan's son. The story has Karloff playing a dark sinister character who seems quite mad. Escaping from an Insane asylum Gravelle promises to get revenge of the individual who tried to kill him in a fire. Besides the magnificent operatic voices, there is dark drama and intrigue in the film as the audience enjoys Karloff at his best as he matches wits with the great Honnlulu detective when murder and mayhem visit the Opera House. William Demarest makes for an appearance as a police officer. All in all, this is but one of the many movies, which intrigues audiences in the 30 and 40's. Recommended. ****

According to my sources, there seems to be a slight disagreement on the singing in this movie. Denis Gifford's Karloff bio says that Karloff did his own singing (and he could have; he was a fair baritone and sang in the Dulwich College chorus). Oscar Levant's autobiography claims that Karloff was dubbed. Oscar Levant, however, seems to have been writing from an unreliable memory, as he gets other details wrong including the movie synopsis. There are three singing voices heard in the movie: soprano, tenor, and baritone. The tenor was never seen, but was heard onstage while Chan and Number One Son were backstage. Both actresses playing sopranos were synching to the same recording. Karloff may also have been synching to a recording, but it could well have been his own, both for the reason given above and because Levant's opera was written for the movie--no previous recordings existed at the time, and why would the studio have spent extra money on a second singer for a B-budget film when they already had someone on the film who could handle the baritone singing? (Even the Faust costume worn by both baritones onstage was secondhand--it was first worn by Lawrence Tibbett in "Metropolitan", filmed earlier in 1936!)

This entry in the long-running and hugely popular 'Charlie Chan' series takes us into the distinguished - and a bit decadent - world of grand opera: famous soprano singer Lilli Rochelle, eccentric and somewhat conceited, is on the brink of hysteria because she's received a death threat for the very same day - her opening night in Los Angeles, after being away for seven years. And on exactly the same day, an amnesiac breaks out of a mental asylum after seven years; because, as soon as he sees her picture in the papers, he seems to remember something...

Meanwhile, we learn that second soprano Anita Barelli is madly jealous of Lilli - not only because she's the star, but mainly because she's got an affair with her husband! And then there's a young couple hanging around backstage all the time, for some reason trying by all means to get to Lilli - but then the opera performance starts, and very soon a murderous drama REALLY worthy of any opera libretto begins to take its course...

Except for the comic relief provided by Lee Chan and the cops, this film is pretty earnest, at times dramatic, if not even melodramatic; but we must undoubtedly admit that Boris Karloff probably plays one of the BEST roles of his life here: mad, full of hatred, and then again pitiful and sympathetic... While in other movies he usually only showed parts of his full acting range at a time - here he demonstrates them all in one!

This is my favorite of the Warner Oland Chan films and my second favorite of the series. This one is loaded with atmosphere and has Boris Karloff in it,too! It starts off with an escape from an insane asylum during a thunderstorm at night and gets better from there! Most of the action takes place backstage at an opera house. The opera "Carnival" was written especially for this film and I wish it would be performed so I could see the entire work. Karloff in his Mephisto costume is impressive. In this film, Chan is assisted by Number One Son, Lee, played by Keye Luke. Luke is at his best in this one. He and Oland make a great team. This is another Chan film that even when you know the identity of the murderer, you still want to see the film again and again just for the atmospheric fun. A real pleasure.