So, I've technically reviewed this previously, but I hate that review and kind of want to redo it.
With it being spooky season, I pulled Gaston LeRoux's The Phantom of the Opera off the shelf and spent the week reacquainting myself with late 1800's Paris as our narrator in teenage Paris narrates the strange affair of a missing singer, a missing Viscomte, a dead Count, and various goings on at the Palais Garnier Opera in Paris. I have some tangents to go off on, but we'll put them at the end as I try to spoil a century old book.
We open with our narrator breathlessly telling us he has evidence proving the legends of the Opera Ghost were true, and that hey can narrate for us, the reader how such tangled threads can be related to a non supernatural man. This transports us back to the night when management of the House traded hands, and new management came in, unaware of the codicils in the charter involving on particular Opera Ghost, like leaving Box 5 open for him and paying him 20,000 Francs every month. Several things are happening during the turnover, as Joseph Buquet is found hanging in the third cellar behind a scene from La Roi de Lahore (although the noose is missing by the time half the corps de ballet make it down to investigate), the Opera Diva, Carlotta, has called out for the gala, so one Christine Daae steps up and sings in her place, surprising everyone with his voice and range. Christine's old playmate from childhood, Raoul, Viscompt de Chagne, happened to be in the audience for the gala with his older brother Philippe, Count de Chagne, and goes backstage where he hears Christine talking to a man in her dressing room, even though no one is in there besides Christine.
So, Carlotta is a bit upset about being upstaged by the younger soprano. Indeed, she spends some time trying to get her supporters to help with this. Christine runs off to her father's grave, where Raoul follows. Christine isn't exactly happy to see him. He follows her, hearing someone playing "The Resurrection of Lazarus" on a violin near her father's grave. He sees a shadow among the ossuary, and wakes the next morning on the church altar.
Anyway, Christine vanishes for a month or so, eventually returning and giving Raoul specific directions on how to dress and where to meet her at the Masquerade Gala. The new managers are mildly upset by some rather pointed notes from the ghost, and indeed get in a fight with Madame Giry, the Ghost's personal usher. (One should note, in the text, Giry has 3 teeth in her head and is particularly frumpy. She's also portrayed as rather unintelligent about a lot of things. Even if she's French, she comes off as Cockney.)
I think Box 5 is in the top picture in the visible row.
Anyway, the Masquerade doesn't go well for Raoul, as Christine tells him to leave her be. He watches as she vanishes into the mirror in her dressing room.
The Ghost tells management to let Christine sing Marguerite in Faust as Carlotta will be sick and to let him have Box 5. Management gets annoyed and fires Giry. They then sit in Box 5, watching Carlotta sing the lead. Which leads to two famous set pieces from this. First, Carlotta starts "Co-ack"ing as she's singing. The ghost tells the managers in a diembodied voice that she's going to bring down the chandelier, which does indeed fall right after, killing Madame Giry's replacement.
Yes, this one, even if it is a replacement.
This all happens in the first third of the book. Anyway, Christine does eventually confess he love to Raoul, but only above the stage, indeed on the roof, by the statue of Apollo.
Top Center
This leads to a secret engagement, and Christine finally confessing as to what the hell has been going on. After the death of her father, she lost interest in music. Then the Voice came, teaching her to sing better and with passion. The voice was jealous and told her if she saw a man, he'd leave her forever. The Voice also claimed to be the Angel of Music her father told stories of when she was a child. Anyway, long story short, said voice eventually kidnapped her and took her to his house on the lake in the 5th cellar. Where she learned he was the Opera Ghost, Eric, who wears a black mask to cover the fact he has glowing eyes and a face like a skull.
He also knows all and hears all that happens inside the Opera. Raoul arranges to elope with Christine the next evening after the performance.
The next day, a gossip rag posts something about the engagement, Christine is upset that the ring Eric gave her vanished on the roof, Phillipe things Raoul is embarrassing the family name, the managers question Giry about how she delivers the money to the ghost.
Quite a few things happen. Giry confesses she has no knowledge of there being money in the envelope. She indeed slips the envelope in the manager's pocket, where the ghost gets it. Her whole motivation is a promise the Ghost made that, like other ballerinas in the corps, her daughter Meg will marry into the nobility (namely Empress). (I should note, an aside in the first chapter mentions Meg did become a baroness, so she did get upgraded.) The managers suspect each other of stealing the money, and recreate the evening the money vanished, confusing everyone there to see Faust. Christine sings Marguerite and vanishes during her appeal to heaven towards the end. Raoul eventually meets the Persion, the ebony skinned gentleman who hangs out at the Opera, who leads Raoul into the cellars to find Eric and Christine. (SIDE NOTE: there are some very interesting but never really well explained people running around the cellars, like the shadow the escorts the uninvited to the manager's office, the rat catcher with a flaming face, and the firemen who tend the furnaces. One could almost see another novel of errata explaining how they work.) The Persian leads Raoul into the 3rd cellar where a trapdoor opens into the Ghost's house, behind a certain scene from La Roi de Lahore.
The Persian takes over narration duties for a bit, explaining how he and Raoul wound up in Eric's torture chamber. (For the record, it's a hexagonal room with mirror on all sides and a painted tree that revolves to change the images to eventually get prisoners to hang themselves.) Raoul and the Persian hear Eric and Christine through the wall, as he tells her she has until 11 the next night to choose between the Scorpion and the Grasshopper (two Japanese bronze sculptures), meaning yes, she'll marry him or no she won't. The Persian finds a trapdoor and a room filled with gunpowder filled barrels. Meaning the Grasshopper will jump if she says no, and take a quarter of Paris with it. Christine does eventually choose the Scorpion, and indeed marries Eric however briefly. He relents after a few days and sends her off with Raoul to their own love, before dying in the dungeon used by the Commune under the lowest cellar. In the end, he claims he didn't directly kill anyone (the chandelier chain was worn out, Buquet hung himself, Phillipe ran into a trap and drowned), and he did right by Christine even if it killed him. By all accounts, she returned when he died and returned his ring.
Anyway, a few errata here. The version I currently own is not quite the same translation as what I had in High School. There are a few paragraphs missing in it that I remember quite clearly (one pretty much calling Carlotta a hussy and another describing not only how Carlotta's supporters cheered her on, but were downright rude to Christine) and here it is a secret engagement rather than a pretend engagement. On the other hand, the phrasing in this edition flows more naturally.
My original copy I ended up giving to a homeless kid in 1995. I had dressed as a cheap Broadway Phantom (plastic half mask, black bedsheet cape) to lead kids from the emergency shelter around the dorms trick or treating, and the kid thought I was the Undertaker from the WWE. He asked for my mask, I gave it to him with the book.
As you can tell, the book is majorly different from almost all adaptions, but then, in acting, one needs the big set pieces in a different order to compliment the flow of the performance.
There's a small hint Eric knows he's in the wrong, since the duet he sings with Christine from Faust is during the seduction, when Faust and Mephistopheles don't really have Marguerite's best interests at heart.
As a side note, the chandelier did fall at one point, inspiring this entire novel, but it fell during routine cleaning, injuring no one.
Overall, despite being a century old, it's still fun to read and enjoy wandering around a haunted theater with people who all are doing wrong, but doing it with heart.
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