The Phantom of the Opera (Oxford World's Classics)

by Gaston Leroux

  A few figures taken from the article will suggest the enormous capacity and the perfect convenience of the house. ‘There are 2,531 doors and 7,593 keys; 14 furnaces and 450 grates heat the house; the gaspipes if connected would form a pipe almost 16 miles long; 9 reservoirs, and two tanks hold 22,222 gallons of water and distribute their contents through 22,829 feet of piping; 538 persons have places assigned wherein to change their attire. The musicians have a foyer with 100 closets for their instruments.’

  The author remarks of his visit to the Opera House that it ‘was almost as bewildering as it was agreeable. Giant stairways and colossal halls, huge frescos and enormous mirrors, gold and marble, satin and velvet, met the eye at every turn.’

  In a recent letter, Mr André Castaigne,* whose remarkable pictures illustrate the text, speaks of a river or lake under the Opera House and mentions the fact that there are now also three metropolitan railway* tunnels, one on top of the other.

  EXPLANATORY NOTES

  [dedication] Angel of Music: Joseph (‘Jo’) Leroux, singer and actor, Gaston Leroux’s youngest brother.

  National Academy of Music: when it opened in 1875, the new Paris Opera House was officially named the ‘Académie nationale de musique. Théâtre de l’Opéra’.

  foyer of the ballet: or ballet green room, a meeting place for devotees of the opera and performers, ‘an especially beautiful hall, with its sumptuous decoration and daring frescos’ (William F. Apthorp, ‘[Paris] Theatres and Concerts II: The Opera, The Opera Comique and the Conservatoires’, Scribner’s Magazine, 3 (March 1892), 357).

  the Commune: after the humiliating defeat of France in the brief Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the Second Empire of Napoleon III collapsed and the Third Republic was declared in September. Until the spring of 1871, Paris was besieged by German forces and the population was reduced to near-starvation. On 18 March 1871, before the siege was lifted, socialists and republicans in Paris broke away from the National Assembly sitting at Versailles, and set up a democratically elected national government. The Paris Commune fell in May when Versailles troops returned to the capital and the rebels fought in the city’s catacombs, sewers, and underground places. During the ‘bloody week’ of 21–8 May, over 20,000 Communards were massacred.

  G.L.: whereas the characters mentioned in the last paragraph of this foreword are fictitious (as are earlier Moncharmin, his Memoirs, and Inspector Faure, and subsequently many more), Leroux here acknowledges the help he had received from real persons. André Messager (1853–1929) wrote the scores of numerous light operas and became co-director of the Paris Opera in 1908. The same year, Marius Gabion (1867–1945) was appointed administrator. Charles Garnier (1825–98) was the architect of the Paris Opera House. Jean-Louis Croze (? – 1955) was an occasional dramatist and librettist (for Saint-Saëns and others), a theatre and (later) film critic, and general homme de lettres.

  Polyeucte: Gounod’s opera Polyeucte, based on Corneille’s tragedy (1642 –3), was first performed in 1878. Act III features a ‘pagan ballet’. Audiences still clung to the long-standing tradition that all five-act grand operas should feature two ballets, usually one in Act II and the other in Act IV. Meyerbeer was particularly faithful to the practice.

  Grévin-style: Alfred Grévin (1827–92) was a modeller and founder of the Musée Grévin, a waxworks museum, in Paris in 1882. He created an image of the pert, provocative Parisienne with bold eyes and an upturned nose which is one of the defining icons of the Belle Époque.

  Rue Lepeletier … and Bigottini: situated some 500 metres north-east of the new Opera House, the theatre in the Rue Le Peletier became the capital’s main venue for opera in 1821. Its complete destruction by fire on 29 October 1873 made it necessary to press on with the completion and inauguration of Garnier’s grand replacement in 1875. Sorelli and Jammes are invented characters, but the names which follow were stars of the old Opera. The most famous of the stellar array mentioned here was the dancer Augusta Vestries (1760–1842), member of a line of performers famous since the eighteenth century.

  Pedro Gailhard: Pierre Samson Gailhard (1848–1918), celebrated bass. In 1884, he became co-director (with Jean Ritt (1884–91) and Eugène Bertrand (1891–9)) of the Paris Opera, and continued as sole director from 1899 to 1907 when he was succeeded by André Messager.

  Roi de Lahore: the opera, first performed in 1877, with which Jules Massenet (1842–1912) established his reputation.

  Gounod … Lucrèce Borgia: Charles Gounod (1818–93), Marche funèbre d’une marionnette, written for piano in 1872 and orchestrated in 1879; Ernest Reyer (1823–1909), Sigurd (1883); Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921), La Danse macabre (written as a song in 1872 and orchestrated in 1872) while the song entitled Rêverie orientale (1879) was renamed Rêverie du soir and incorporated into Suite algérienne (1880); Szabadi’s Marche hongroise, orchestrated by Jules Massenet in 1879; Carnaval, by Ernest Guiraud (1837–92), performed as a ballet in 1876, was a movement from his First Orchestral Suite; Léo Delibes (1836–91), Sylvia (1876) and Coppélia (1870); Verdi’s Les Vêpres siciliennes was first performed in 1855 and Donizetti’s Lucrèce Borgia in 1833. The singers mentioned are the baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure (1830–1914), the soprano Denise Bloch, and Gabrielle Krauss (1842–1906), the Austrian prima donna of the Paris Opera between 1875 and 1887, famed for the role attributed by Leroux to the fictitious Spaniard, La Carlotta. The programme of the gala concert shows Leroux’s intimate knowledge of the last quarter-century of French opera.

  Roméo et Juliette … Madame Carvalho: Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette was first performed on 27 April 1867 at the Théâtre-Lyrique which had opened in 1852. Faust was created there on 19 March 1859. The roles of both Juliette and Marguerite were created by Marie Miolan (1827–95) who had married the theatre’s director and impresario, Léon Carvalho, in 1852.

  Ofterdingen: Heinrich von Ofterdingen, a legendary late medieval Minnesinger. In Novalis’s eponymous novel (1802), he symbolizes the Romantic yearning for the unattainable.

  Siebel: ‘a village youth, Faust’s pupil, in love with Marguerite’, a role for soprano voice.

  Louis le Hutin: Louis the Quarrelsome (1289–1316), King of France.

  never been abolished: the system of primogeniture had been the law of France before the Revolution of 1789. It was abolished by Napoleon and replaced with the equal inheritance rights of all offspring, male and female.

  the Borda: two decommissioned sailing vessels of this name served as training ships at the Naval College at Brest in Brittany, the first between 1839 and 1863 and the second from 1863 to 1890.

  for three years: after the disappearance of the Franklin expedition in the ice-bound Canadian north in the 1840s, search parties were sent from Europe in the hope of rescuing a number of such stranded explorers. It was a subject made for the juvenile end of the popular fiction market, with Jules Verne leading the charge in 1866 with Les Anglais au pôle nord (The English at the North Pole).

  was one of them: ‘the abonnement, or yearly subscription, to the Opera, depends overweaningly upon the ballet; this is what the special public, the regular customers of the house, principally care for’ (Apthorp, ‘[Paris] Theatres and Concerts II: The Opera’, 357). The subscription gave all male members free admission to the foyer of the corps de ballet. Most subscribers belonged to the Jockey Club.

  War Dance and the Country Dance … M. Boulanger: two of the four murals painted for the foyer de la danse by Gustave-Clarence-Rodolphe Boulanger (1824–88), a friend of Charles Garnier for whom he completed a number of commissions at the Opera.

  several thousand in all: 7,993 exactly. See Appendix.

  Conservatoire: the Conservatoire national de musique et d’art dramatique was founded in 1795 and remained the major teaching centre for the performing arts in France until 1946 when the various divisions were separated. The Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique is still located in the original building in the ninth arrondissement. It was there that Christine Daaé
’s audition took place and its large concert hall, famed for its acoustics, was also the venue for the concert in which she is later invited to sing.

  understood him…: Richard takes both sides in the ongoing Guerre des Bouffons, a fierce quarrel fought in the eighteenth century by the defenders of formal operatic style of the French tradition and the supporters of the lively, more lyrical model of Italian opera composers like Piccini (1728–1800). Richard’s taste is less catholic than wildly eclectic. The final comment is directed as much against the still controversial figure of Wagner as at the musical snobbery of Richard.

  the Café Jacques: like the Théâtre des Ambassadeurs, known for its popular revues and café-concerts, the Café Jacques was situated on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

  said Richard: Richard draws the conclusion that because the postbox in the Boulevard des Capucines is the nearest to the ex-Directors’ homes, one or both of them had sent the letter.

  giry-talk: the word girie is older than Mme Giry. First recorded in 1790 (from Old French girer, to turn), it meant an ‘exaggerated, hypocritical grumble’ (Littré’s Dictionnaire, 1882 edition) and later acquired the sense of something affected or mannered. There is no confirmation of the sense given it here, of ‘slanderous gossip’.

  La Juive: opera in five acts by Halévy with libretto by Scribe, first performed in Paris in 1835.

  Hamlet … village of Skotelof: Hamlet, score by Ambroise Thomas (1811–96) and libretto by Michel Carré and Jules Barbier. It was first performed at the Salle Le Peletier in 1868 where the role of Ophelia was created by Christine Nilsson. In a note written in 1925 (quoted by F. Lacassin in Œuvres (Paris: Laffont, 1984), 1001), Leroux revealed that his soprano was a real diva ‘whose real name I hid under that of Christine Daaé’. It is clear that he was thinking of Christine Nilsson (1843–1921). She too was Swedish. She was born at Sjöabol, near Växjö (Christine’s birthplace is given as nearby Skatelof, also in the southern county of Kronoberg), and she too was discovered by a well-to-do civil servant playing the violin at a market at Ljungby (Leroux’s Ljimby, see p. 55). Her patron paid for her training, the role attributed in the novel to Professor Valerius. Like Christine Daaé, she made her mark in the role of Marguerite which she sang in the Paris Opera’s first production of Gounod’s Faust in 1869 and again in 1883 for the opening season of the New York Metropolitan Opera House in its inaugural performance of the opera. She withdrew from the stage shortly after, at about the time when, in Leroux’s novel, Christine makes her mark as Marguerite. Leroux nowhere explains why he used Nilsson’s early life in this way. He may have heard something of her during his time in Sweden in 1900, but never heard her, for she had retired before he arrived in Paris in 1886.

  Perros: Perros-Guirec, a small fishing port on the north Brittany coast, 11 km from Lannion and 75 km west of Saint-Brieuc.

  a great musician: there is no evidence that ‘Gustave Daaé’ hides a real musician or that the name Daaé has any particular significance.

  Andersen … poet Runeberg: Hans Christian Andersen (1805–75), the Danish storyteller. Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804–77) was a Finnish poet who wrote in Swedish. His lyrical, patriotic stories appeared as Tales of Ensign Staal between 1848 and 1860.

  the Resurrection of Lazarus: Schubert’s Lazarus, part cantata and part oratorio, intended to be performed as a sacred drama, was begun in 1820 and planned in 3 acts. Only Act I and part of Act II survive. Act III, showing the Resurrection, was never written. It says much for Leroux’s musical culture that he should know this work which was not performed, in a version completed by Edison Denisov, until 1996.

  Adamastor: a mythological god invented by Luis de Camões (Os Lusíadas (1572), canto V) to express the dangers facing early Portuguese explorers like Vasco da Gama. Adamastor, who threatened to unleash the elements on anyone trying to sail round the Cape of Good Hope, figures particularly in Meyerbeer’s opera L’Africaine (1865).

  Lenepveu’s copper ceiling: Jules-Eugène Lenepveu (1819–98) was well known as a painter of historical subjects.

  the Rotonde: a circular domed space, lavishly decorated, on the east side of the building where refreshments were served.

  Le Prophète: an opera in five acts by Meyerbeer, libretto by Scribe, first performed in Paris in 1849.

  Franconi’s equestrian director: the Franconis, a family of Italian origin, became famous in Paris for their stables in the eighteenth century. In 1873, Victor Franconi (1810–97), who had taken over the Cirque national, renamed it the Cirque d’hiver. He and his son Charles (1844–1910) were the last of the great equestrian circus masters.

  Tortoni’s … Pertuiset: Tortoni’s was a celebrated café and restaurant on the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue Taitbout. It opened in 1798 and closed in 1893. It was at its height as a fashionable haunt for writers, musicians, and artists in the 1860s and 1870s. Aurélien Scholl (1833–1902), a versatile writer and seasoned duellist, was the editor of L’Écho de Paris when Leroux joined it in 1893; he was also a sportsman and had founded a periodical, Le Jockey, in 1863. Manet painted Eugène Pertuiset as ‘The Lion Hunter’ in 1863.

  ‘Sombre forests!’: ‘Selva opaca deserta brughiera’, from Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (1829).

  said Firmin Richard: at this point, the serialized text (Le Gaulois, 21 and 22 October 1909) gives us an early glimpse of the Persian. Richard and Moncharmin observe him sitting in the stalls directly under the box occupied by Persia’s new ambassador. He keeps his back to the Ambassador as if not wishing to be recognized, ‘for it was rumoured that he had been an important man in Persia’. ‘The Persian was a living enigma who had begun to annoy Parisian society. He never spoke, never smiled, came to every performance but showed no reaction.’ The narrator then quotes Monsieur A. D…., one of M. Rémy’s predecessors, a former secretary of the Opera House: ‘He has been prowling through our Paris lives for a good number of years, always alone, always tight-lipped, but liking crowds, seeking them out, staring at them stonily by day and by lamplight, walking a little hesitantly, attending every production, always dressed the same way, in an astrakhan hat and an enveloping, black coat in the sleeves of which his perpetually restless hands never stop fidgeting.’ The narrator repeats a further comment from the Memoirs of Moncharmin who noted that the Persian was a handsome man. He was ‘of average height, with regular features and an expressive, manly face imprinted with the deepest melancholy, dark, burning melancholy eyes, a jet-black beard, amber-coloured skin made golden by the suns of the Orient…’. Moncharmin also noted that people stared at him and rattled their keys to ward off the evil eye. To compensate for this cut, Leroux allows the Persian a brief appearance at the beginning of Chapter 14.

  Carmen: there is a world of difference between Gounod’s virginal Marguerite and the gypsy Carmen, free spirit and heroine of Bizet’s opera of 1875. Perhaps Leroux intends some reference to Emma Calvé (1858–1942) who, it was said of her performance in Faust, always seemed a Carmen masquerading as Marguerite.

  newspaper reports of the time: the newspapers told a rather different and less dramatic story. At three minutes to nine on 20 May 1896, there was a loud bang and a bright flash as an electric cable shorted and melted a steel cable holding one of the seven counterweights which supported the massive central chandelier. The chandelier, originally powered by gas but lit by electricity since 1881, remained in place, but the counterweight, weighing some 700 kilos, broke through the ceiling and landed in the upper gallery killing outright one spectator and injuring several others. The stalls and dress and upper circles were unaffected. The victim was named as a Mme Chaumette who worked as a concierge and was enjoying her first—and last—visit to the Opera. The damage was slight; the hole in the ceiling was quickly repaired and half-a-dozen seats in the upper gallery were easily replaced. The Opera opened its doors as usual the following evening. See Le Figaro, 21 and 23 May 1896.

  CONCIERGE’S HEAD!: Leroux’s memory of the incident may have been faulty, tho
ugh it was probably to maximize the effect that he replaced the relatively modest counterweight with the entire chandelier. It weighed 7 or 8 tons and such an object falling into the stalls would have pulverized many more patrons than poor Mme Chaumette. He also adapts the headline in Le Matin (21 May): ‘Five Hundred Kilos Land on Concierge’s Head!’

  Gavarni … Courtille: the caricaturist Paul Gavarni (1804–66) was one of many who sketched the ‘descente de la Courtille’, one of the three main parades of the pre-Lenten carnival. La Courtille was at the height of its popularity between the 1820s and 1860. It occupied a site near the present Belleville metro station in the eleventh arrondissement.

  Roméo et Juliette: the ‘Wedding-Night’ duet occurs in Act III Scene i of Gounod’s opera.

  do so in future: Christine’s firm stance in defence of her independence is an example of Leroux’s clear feminist sympathies.

  shall not die!: the text is based on John 11: 25–6: ‘I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’

  furnaces: for ‘the illumination, heating, cooling and ventilation of so vast a space … hot water and hot-air furnaces are employed, fourteen in all, consuming daily about 10 tons of coal’ (Manufacturer and Builder (July 1875), 154).