The Phantom of the Opera: Encyclopedia II - The Phantom of the Opera - Plot

The Phantom of the Opera - Plot

The Phantom of The Opera is a Gothic novel, combining romance, horror fiction, mystery, and tragedy.

In Leroux's original 1910 novel, the setting is 19th century Paris at the Opera Garnier (The Paris Opera or The National Academy of Music), a luxurious and monumental building which has been built between 1857 and 1874 over a huge underground lake. The employees claim that the opera house is haunted by a mysterious ghost who causes a variety of accidents. The "Opera Ghost" ("le fantôme de l'Opéra") blackmails the two opera managers to pay him a monthly salary of 20,000 francs and reserve for him a private concert booth, Box 5.

Meanwhile, Erik has taken on a new protegee, Christine Daaé. He tells her that he is the "Angel of Music," a spirit that her dead father sent to her from heaven, gives her voice lessons through the wall. Christine is enthralled and achieves sudden prominence on the opera stage when she replaces the current prima donna Carlotta, who has twice necessitated replacement due to a mysterious illness. Christine wins the hearts of the audience, including that of her childhood friend, Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny.

Erik becomes envious of Christine's relationship with Raoul and brings her down to his rather Gothic world beneath the Opera House. Christine quickly learns that there is nothing angelic about Erik at all---a terrifying, ingenious and pitiful criminal who pines for her love. Christine is furious that she was tricked into giving her "soul" to a man when she thought it was something supernatural, and demands to be set free. Erik promises to let her out after 5 days. While Erik sings her a love song, she rips off his mask, revealing his disfigured face, and Erik angrily rounds on her. "If I live to be one hundred, I should always hear that superhuman cry of grief and rage which he uttered before that terrible sight reached my eyes," Christine tells Raoul. Then he locks her in his home, agreeing to free her only after she promises to return to him of her own free will and to never love anyone else. Christine returns, but she's not so sure that she won't love anyone else.

Christine is torn between her love of the handsome viscount and her attraction to Erik's darkly beautiful music. When she realizes that Erik is responsible for the mysterious accidents and murders, she and Raoul decide to marry in secret and run away from Paris and Erik's reach.

The Phantom discovers their plan and during Christine's performance as Marguerite in Gounod's Faust he abducts her from the stage. A character known as the Persian leads Raoul to Erik's lair across the Opera House Lake. Meanwhile, Erik forces Christine to marry him, or he would blow up the Opera House, and everyone, including Christine, Raoul and himself, would be killed.

Eventually, Christine's ability to accept him touches Erik's heart to the point where he feels a greater happiness than he ever thought possible. He releases her and gives her his blessing to marry Raoul. Christine is relieved, but Erik is in so much despair that he's ready to die for her. He asks only that she promise to return and bury him with the ring he gave her after he dies, which indeed he does not long afterward. "He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world, and in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar," Gaston Leroux wrote at the end of the book.

And Christine kept that promise.

The Phantom of the Opera - Erik's personal history

In Gaston Leroux's novel, The Phantom of the Opera, we are never given a thorough history of the Phantom's life. We are only given snippets of his brilliance at illusion and design by way of remembrances of the Persian. The Persian recalls Erik's time of employment for the Shah-in-Shah of Persia as 'The Rosy Hours of Mazenderan,' called such because of the deaths of the many victims of the Shah and the 'little sultana' in the house-of-horrors that was the Shah's palace at Mazenderan. It was built in such a way that not even the slightest whisper could be considered secure and private. The architecture was arranged so that sound carried and reverberated at myriad locations, so that one never knew who might be listening in. The Persian does not go into great detail on the actual circumstances, dwelling instead on the vague horrors that existed at Mazenderan. Leroux does tell us that the Shah became paranoid that Erik would use his genius against him, and ordered him executed. It was only by intervention of the Persian (the 'daroga, or police chief of Mazenderan, whose own life had been saved by Erik in the past) and his friends, that Erik was able to escape.

Though Leroux appears to have given Erik a very shallow depth-of-field, other, more in-depth histories of his life do exist in various forms based on what we learn in Leroux's novel. The most widely accepted 'official' version of the Phantom's past is the novel Phantom by Susan Kay. It details his life from birth until his death beneath the Opera House. According to Kay, the Phantom was born as Erik in a small town not far from Rouen, the son of a master mason. He ran away at an early age from his father's house, where his deformed face was a subject of horror and terror to his parents. For a time, he frequented the fairs, where a freak show showman exhibited him as the "living corpse." He traveled around Europe and Asia with Gypsies. There he acquired his acrobatic and musical skills and sharpened his twisted genius. He also became an expert ventriloquist.

Eventually, Erik became a court assassin and personal engineer to the Persian Shah, building the Shah sophisticated traps and torture devices (such as the Punjab Lasso and the Torture Chamber). After some time, the Shah feared that Erik knew too much and decided to dispose of him. Erik managed to escape, eventually making his way back to France. (Based on the dating this unnamed Shah could be Nasser-al-Din Shah (1831–1896, reigned 1848–1896).

Erik used his architectural genius skills and won a contract as one of the architects of Paris' Palais Garnier Opera House. Below the Opera House, an artificial lake had been created during its construction using eight hydraulic pumps because of problems with the ground water level that kept rising. Without anyone noticing, Erik built a maze of tunnels and corridors in the lower levels. Past the underground lake, he built a lair for himself, where he could live protected from the public.

Besides being a brilliant inventor and engineer, Erik was also a musical genius, and he started to visit the opera house in order to listen to operas and interfere with the manager's bad taste. Because he could not show his distorted face in public, he took the guise of a ghost, using violence in order to blackmail the opera managers and bind them to his will. He exploited the employees' superstitions and his knowledge about the building's secret passages, allowing him access to every part of the building without being noticed. He terrorized those who refused his demands and even killed people as warnings. However, he treated those who were loyal to him and obeyed his command very kindly (such as Mme. Giry).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Plot", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki