I am not saying that it is not an unusual and highly interesting story. In fact, it is one of the all-night kind, where you don’t stop reading until the morning milkman rattles the cans at the front stoop.
Leroux was evidently first inspired by the architectural marvels of the world’s greatest opera house, which is the Paris temple of music-drama. This structure, of colossal size and luxurious splendor, has four or five stories underneath the ground, has also a subterranean lake which had to be mastered before the foundations could be secured, and in its time has served not only as an academy of music, but as a fortress, an arsenal, and a refuge for military fugitives.
Placing his plot back a number of years, Leroux introduces the reader and a new management simultaneously, and lets both reader and management face an uncanny problem—the “opera ghost.” This creature, though seldom seen, occupies a box, demands a tremendous indemnity for his personal expenses, exercises a supernatural charlatanism over the mechanical and physical end of the institution, and, when his ogreish demands are refused, destroys property and actually kills innocent people.
A beautiful and young Swedish singer of celestial voice, Christine Daaé, is beloved by the ghost, whose affection, in its ardor and cruelty, seems to transcend any earthly admiration.
The horrible and generally grotesque pranks of the opera ghost, his marvellous musical ability, his abduction of the exquisite Christine, his imprisonment of her in his golden house on the subterranean lake, the adventures of her noble lover in his dauntless pursuit, the mystery of the solemn Persian who is allied with the lover but who yet has been the friend and confidante of the opera ghost, the ghost’s own hideous personality, the bizarre adventure of the Persian and the lover in the death-dealing “tropical forest,” the devotion of the beautiful Christine, her sorrow for and equal abhorrence of the tragic ghost, who is practically dead in life, the majestic yet terrible score of the ghost’s opera, “Don Juan Triumphant,” the sorrowful renunciation by the ghost—well, these are just chapter-titles. Interesting? I should say! They give you the creeps. They make your hair stand, and gooseflesh your skin.
—March 26, 1911
QUESTIONS
1. What is the relation between art and artifice in this novel? Are they opposites or essentially the same, or is one a stimulus to the other?
2. The complaint has been made that The Phantom of the Opera is excessively plot-driven, that there is no subtlety or richness in the characterization, and that in fact the characters have no psychology. On the other hand, authors can represent a character’s inner state by what surrounds him as well as by what he does. What do you think? Are the opera house and the things in it, especially the five cellars, essentially psychological, even moral?
3. Would you rather that the supernatural happenings had not been explained away, that they had remained supernatural, or at least ambiguous?
4. Does the novel have a moral—such as that love is redemptive, that evil men are made, not born, or that creativity emerges out of a substratum of dark energies?
For Further Reading
CRITICISM ON THE NOVEL
Hogle, Jerrold E. The Undergrounds of “The Phantom of the
Opera ”: Sublimation and the Gothic in Leroux’s Novel and Its
Progeny. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.
BACKGROUND AND GENERAL INTEREST
Christiansen, Rupert. Paris Babylon: The Story of the Paris Commune.
New York: Penguin, 1996.
Elwitt, Sanford. The Making of the Third Republic: Class and Politics
in France, 1868-1884. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1975.
Fontaine, Gérard. Charles Garnier’s Opéra: Architecture and Exterior
Decor. Paris: Patrimoine, 2000.
Haining, Peter, ed. The Gaston Leroux Bedside Companion: Weird
Stories by the Author of “The Phantom of the Opera.” London:
Gollancz, 1980.
Kessler, Joan C., ed. Demons of the Night: Tales of the Fantastic,
Madness, and the Supernatural from Nineteenth-Century France.
Translated by Joan Kessler. Chicago and London: University
of Chicago Press, 1995.
Mead, Christopher M. Charles Garnier’s Paris Opera: Architectural
Empathy and the Renaissance of French Classicism. Cambridge,
MA, and London: MIT Press, 1991.
Perrot, Michelle, ed. A History of Private Life (vol. 4 of From the
Fires of Revolution to the Great War) . Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 1990.
Perry, George. The Complete Phantom of the Opera. New York:
Henry Holt, 1987.
Pinkney, David H. Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958.
Pitou, Spire. The Paris Opera: An Encyclopedia of Operas, Ballets,
Composers, and Performers. 3 vols. Westport, CT, and London:
Greenwood Press, 1983-1985.
Riley, Philip J. The Making of “The Phantom of the Opera”: Including
the Original 1925 Shooting Script. Absecon, NJ: Magic
Image Filmbooks, 1999.
Webber, Andrew Lloyd, and Joel Schumacher. The Phantom of
the Opera Companion. London: Pavilion Books, 2004. Williams, Roger L., ed. The Commune of Paris, 1871. New York:
Wiley, 1969.
a Another name for the Opera House.
b One of Paris’s principal streets, which spans the first and fourth arrondissements (sections of the city).
c Chic area of Paris, populated largely by aristocrats during the nineteenth century.
d I have the anecdote, which is quite authentic, from M. Pedro Gailhard, himself, the late manager of the Opera. [Leroux’s note]4
e Town about 50 miles north of Stockholm.
f Breton word for “ghosts” or “goblins.”
g Figure of the storm spirit in South African literature.
h Reference to George Bizet’s celebrated opera of 1875.
i Type of horse-drawn carriage.
j The Bois de Boulogne, a park where Parisians often strolled and rode in carriages.
k Long, loose cloak with a hood, usually worn with a half mask.
l Period of three days immediately preceding Ash Wednesday.
m A naturally sweet wine from the area around Tokaj, Hungary.
n Four-wheeled carriage with two double inside seats facing each other.
o Extras (“super” is short for “supernumerary”).
p Flash notes [a term for “play money”] drawn on the “Bank of St. Farce” in France correspond with those drawn on the “Bank of Engraving” in England. [Translator’s Note.]
q M. Pedro Gailhard has himself told me that he created a few additional posts as door-shutters for old stage-carpenters whom he was unwilling to dismiss from the service of the Opera. [Leroux’s note]
r In those days, it was still part of the firemen’s duty to watch over the safety of the Opera House outside the performances; but this service has since been suppressed. I asked M. Pedro Gailhard the reason, and he replied:
“It was because the management was afraid that, in their utter inexperience of the cellars of the Opera, the firemen might set fire to the building!” [Leroux’s note]
s Like the Persian, I can give no further explanation touching the apparition of this shade. Whereas, in this historic narrative, everything else will be normally explained, however abnormal the course of events may seem, I can not give the reader expressly to understand what the Persian meant by the words, “It is some one much worse than that!” The reader must try to guess for himself, for I promised M. Pedro Gailhard, the former manager of the Opera, to keep his secret regarding the extremely interesting and useful personality of the wandering, cloaked shade which, while condemning itself to live in the cellars of the Opera, rendered such immense services to those who, on gala ev
enings, for instance, venture to stray away from the stage. I am speaking of state services; and, upon my word of honour, I can say no more. [Leroux’s note]2
t All the water had to be exhausted, in the building of the Opera. To give an idea of the amount of water that was pumped up, I can tell the reader that it represented the area of the court-yard of the Louvre and a height half as deep again as the towers of Notre Dame. And nevertheless the engineers had to leave a lake. [Leroux’s note]
u These two pairs of boots, which were placed, according to the Persian’s papers, just between the set piece and the scene from the Roi de Lahore, on the post where Joseph Buquet was found hanging, were never discovered. They must have been taken by some stage-carpenter or “door-shutter.” [Leroux’s note]
v Inhabitants of the northernmost part of Vietnam. †An official report from Tonkin, received in Paris at the end of July, 1909, relates how the famous pirate chief De Tham was tracked, together with his men, by our soldiers; and how all of them succeeded in escaping, thanks to this trick of the reeds. [Leroux’s note] ‡Female member of the family of the sovereign of a Muslim state.
w Daroga is Persian for chief of police. [Leroux’s note] †The Persian might easily have admitted that Erik’s fate also interested himself, for he was well aware that, if the government of Teheran had learned that Erik was still alive, it would have been all up with the modest pension of the erstwhile daroga. It is only fair, however, to add that the Persian had a noble and generous heart; and I do not doubt for a moment that the catastrophes which he feared for others greatly occupied his mind. His conduct, throughout this business, proves it and is above all praise. [Leroux’s note]2
x Petition made in the Catholic mass; it is Greek for “Lord have mercy.”
y Famous wax museum in Paris that opened in 1882.
z An upright post with a projecting arm, used for hangings.
aa It is very natural that, at the time when the Persian was writing, he should take so many precautions against any spirit of incredulity on the part of those who were likely to read his narrative. Nowadays, when we have all seen this sort of room, his precautions would be superfluous. [Leroux’s note]
ab Town located near Versailles, to the west of Paris.
ac Even so, I am convinced that it would be easy to reach it by draining the lake, as I have repeatedly requested the Ministry of Fine Arts to do. I was speaking about it to M. Dujardin-Beaumetz, the under-secretary for fine arts, only forty-eight hours before the publication of this book. Who knows but that the score of Don Juan Triumphant might yet be discovered in the house on the lake? [Leroux’s note]
ad Town in Russia.
ae Conjuring trick requiring manual dexterity.
af Emperor of Persia.
ag The oldest existing city in central Asia, located in present-day Uzbekistan.
ah The Afghani-Persian war was from 1837 to 1842.
ai One of the sultan’s residences in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul).
aj See the interview of the special correspondent of the Matin, with Mohammed-Ali Bey, on the day after the entry of the Salonika troops into Constantinople. [Leroux’s note]
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