The Phantom of the Opera

by Gaston Leroux

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Success in Film and On Stage More Than Original Novel

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It is something of an adage among film critics that great movies can be made from bad novels but that great novels very seldom yield great movies. When screenwriters try to adapt a great novel, they are almost sure to have their work met with the tired old line, “The book was better.” Great books are considered great because readers care about them: screen adapters of these books have to know that their every move is being scrutinized, lest they leave out some important, treasured element. At the same time, those adapting weaker sources might feel free to leave out whole plot lines, move the action to another continent, or tack on a happy ending, all without much fuss being raised.

Gaston Leroux’s novel The Phantom of the Opera does, in fact, fit this general rule. The book has never been taken very seriously, having been serialized in newspapers, having been bound into novel form in 1910, and then having withered away from the shelves into the dustbin of obscurity. Most readers of its time dismissed it as just another potboiler churned out by a former journalist who was striving to bring in an income by freelancing, willing to write whatever the public would pay to read. It took the 1925 silent film to bring that book back to life. The film starred Lon Chaney, who was one of the most sought-after stars of its day, and it, along with F. W. Murnau’s 1922 vampire film Nosferatu, defined the horror film for decades to come. Throughout the decades, there were various remakes of the Chaney film, and then, in 1986, there came the stage musical by Andrew Lloyd Weber. As of the early 2000s, the musical had broken records for ticket and soundtrack sales and had played all over the world to sellout crowds. Its version of the story, emphasizing the romantic angle and de-emphasizing the macabre, had defined The Phantom of the Opera for late twentiethcentury and early twenty-first-century audiences.

Since Leroux’s novel had both the horror and the romance that the subsequent adaptations were able to capitalize on so well, it is interesting to ask why they were able to succeed so well with his ideas. The novel is not without its skills, but it also has its weaknesses. The core issue seems to be that its strengths all tend to lend themselves to the visual arts, while its weaknesses all fall in areas where great writing usually shines.

There are many elements of true wit and originality in the novel, twists that show Leroux to be a talented writer, distinguishing him from others who are more willing than able when it comes to producing literature. Of these, one of the strongest elements is the consistency of the narrator’s voice. Leroux provides an inquisitive narrator on a quest in this book: he (or, conceivably, she) starts out with the question of whether the legendary opera ghost was real and chases the evidence down to its one deductive conclusion. The triumph of this narrator lies in the lengths that Leroux goes to in order to plausibly give him access to information. The book’s Preface gives a list of sources that the narrator is said to have contacted for this inquiry, some thirty years after the fact: names that mean nothing to the reader who has just cracked the book’s cover but that establish a sense of honesty. Other narrative techniques include references to printed sources such as police interviews and the journals left by the Persian (whose true name is withheld, simulating a connection to late nineteenth- or early...

(This entire section contains 1638 words.)

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twentieth-century society) and facts about the way the opera house came to be built. As a former journalist, Leroux does a meticulous job of feeding his story through this plausible, objective narrator, one that could possibly have access to the information and, more importantly, the feelings of those who participated, more than a generation earlier. Still, the narrator is the first element that the successful adaptations leave out, and rightfully so.

Although the narrator is skillfully constructed, it turns out to be a hollow accomplishment. The narrator does not really do anything in the novel other than gathering information. He has the same function that a third-person narrator would have, though a third-person narrator could explore people and places without having to explain how the information became available. Though there may have been some benefit to having the story told by a man living in 1910, in order to show the contrast between the modern world and the shadowy world of the past, little is lost in leaving this person out of films and plays. The narrator’s main function of shrouding the events with mystery is taken up by light and shadow and set designs.

Which leads to Leroux’s other great accomplishment in the novel, his sense of scene. Of the thousands of patrons who sat in the Paris opera house after it was built, he was the one with a sense of mystery who could see the inherent drama that it evoked, presenting culture and refinement built over former prisons. So strong was his sense of scene, in fact, that readers can see the lengths he was willing to go, just to raise the right atmosphere. In Chapter XIII, for instance, he has Christine and Raoul move out of the opera house to talk but places their conversation on the roof, amid a gloomy background of imposing statuary that is just as spooky as anything down below—a setting that makes no sense, given that they are still within range of the phantom’s influence. But even that brief change of venue is mild, compared to the way that, in Chapter VI, Leroux has Christine and Raoul travel cross-country to Perros, apparently just to take them to a graveyard at midnight. The book is full of vivid but structurally unnecessary moments, from the appearance of the rat-catcher underground (to tease the audience with an infestation of rats) to the amazing coincidence of Raoul going to Bois de Boulogne on a vague tip, only to see the phantom and Christine drive by in a carriage (apparently added for the visual effect of a carriage at night).

Though Leroux was brilliant at producing frightening visual effects in this book, his execution was not always so impressive. Readers have difficulty seeing the statue of Apollo’s Lyre, the carriage, or the gravestone that Raoul was apparently found spread out on in the morning. One of the most chilling sights to come from the book, the appearance of a masked death-head at a costume ball (which was itself openly appropriated from Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Masque of the Red Death”) is glided over in two paragraphs of dense narrative, muting its power and making readers wonder what it was they have just seen and why. This very image plays an impressive role in both the movie and the play, capitalized on by storytellers who understood the value of the scary images that Leroux seems to have conjured up by the dozens without restraint.

As a writer, Leroux was weakest in handling characterization. He just seems to have had no interest in the inner workings of the human beings. The other characters in the novel do not prove to be much more substantial than the narrator. The book’s male lead, Raoul, is so lacking in personality that Leroux brings in the Persian at the end to take over the traditional chores of the hero, such as finding and confronting the monster. Christine is a little more complex, but her complexity results from her being tricked by the phantom into associating him with a guardian angel: it is not until the screen and stage adaptations that her dual attraction and revulsion are acknowledged. As for the phantom himself, Erik: in the abstract, he could be considered a complex character, with his hatred for humanity clouded by his love for Christine, his beautifully artistic soul defied by the shadows that he is forced to live in. The problem is that, having established these elements of character, Leroux does not follow through with them. At any given moment he brings Erik’s sense of love, anger, or compassion to the fore, depending on whether Leroux wants the action to move toward murder, kidnapping, or, in the end, sudden forgiveness.

The problem is that Leroux’s writing is all elements and no details. He is like a land developer who can see a field built up into blocks of houses, but he does not know what particular houses should go where, much less what should go in them. This is why adaptations of his book work better than the book itself. His horror-story elements are visual and, therefore, work more effectively when played out visually, but that is only half of the explanation: his work was so unrefined that anybody who took the time to rework it, to pay closer attention to the implied meaning behind the phantom’s mask, the falling chandelier, the rooftop encounter, the caverns of forgotten laborers and the rest would almost have to produce an impressive artistic work. In fact, the characters from The Phantom of the Opera were appropriated by several writers over the course of the twentieth century, who cast them into their own fiction. The fact that the most popular forms of this story have been a movie and a play has something to do with Gaston Leroux’s sense of the visual and his sense of the broader movements that make characters, but it has even more to do with the fact that he seems to have left the telling of his story undone.

Source: David Kelly, Critical Essay on The Phantom of the Opera, in Novels for Students, Thomson Gale, 2005.

Gaston Leroux

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Several motion picture adaptations (the first in 1925) and stage adaptations have kept French author Gaston Leroux’s original novel Le Fantome de l’Opera (The Phantom of the Opera) alive in the minds of readers throughout the world for over eight decades. Published in 1996, The Essential “Phantom of the Opera”: The Definitive Annotated Edition of Gaston Leroux’s Classic Novel, edited by Leonard Wolf is merely one of numerous, more recent editions published in the United States since the first English translation appeared in 1911. Through the book and its offspring in other media, this story of a disfigured singer who haunts the labyrinthine opera house in Paris and his love for the young and beautiful Christine has become a part of modern culture, a legend that has taken on a life of its own. The Phantom “is a figure of power and poignance, horror and mystery,” explained Richard Corliss in Time magazine.” He dwells in the fetid cellar of the subconscious; from those depths rises the music of passions we hardly dare attend. He is the Id aching for the Ideal, loathsomeness wanting to be loved, unknown fear reaching up to touch or break our hearts.” Corliss added, “He is kin to Pygmalion, Cyrano, Quasimodo, Dracula, the Elephant Man and King Kong—artists isolated in their genius, Beasts pining for a Beauty.”

Leroux’s classic novel was first serialized in France and Britain before being published in book form. It was based in part on actual events. Leroux had visited the Paris Opera House several times while working as a drama critic and was familiar with its architecture and history. Begun in 1861, the Opera was finished in 1879 and was comprised of seventeen stories with mazes of corridors and stairways, private suites for then-Emperor Napoleon III, stables for horses, dressing rooms for 500 performers, storage cellars for costumes, and an underground lake on its lowest level. The atmosphere of the building was made more mysterious by rumors that a ghost or strange being haunted its depths and had been responsible for several unexplained deaths. Leroux worked many of these details into his novel, including how the opera house’s main chandelier had fallen upon an audience in 1896.

Influenced by Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, Leroux created for his book a horribly disfigured central character named Erik. Erik is a wonderful musician with a beautiful voice, but he is so ugly that from birth his mother required him to wear a mask. He builds a home for himself on the underground lake beneath the Opera and prowls its corridors unseen, leaving notes signed “O.G.” (for Opera Ghost) instructing the management on how the theater is to be run.

To his underground residence the Phantom brings young Christine Daae, a beautiful understudy he has fallen in love with and whose career he is advancing. But Christine is in love with Raoul, a young nobleman she has known since she was a child, and is terrified of the Ghost. Eventually, however, she begins to understand Erik’s longing and comes to pity him. In Leroux’s final scenes, writes Drake Douglas in Horror!, “when Erik speaks of the wonder of being looked upon without fear by a beautiful woman, of actually feeling the warmth of a woman’s kiss on his horrible face, surely then we cannot feel too much fear and hatred for this monster who had the misfortune to be born with a great heart and a terrible ugliness.”

The Phantom of the Opera was not an overwhelmingly successful novel in a critical sense. At the time of its original publication, a contributor to the New York Times Book Review noted it as an interesting “ghost story . . . but when the phantom ceases to be a phantom, and things begin to be accounted for, one’s interest sensibly weakens.” Even so, the New York Times Book Review contributor positively remarked on the novel’s description of the Opera House and found the book “effective” and stated that “its style is picturesque and vivid.” And although at times almost “ridiculous,” a Nation reviewer concluded that the story is “ingenious” and “despite the incredibility of the whole situation, M. Leroux succeeds in piquing the reader’s curiosity, and . . . [the novel contains some] ‘breathless suspense.’”

Despite the novel’s reception among critics, the Phantom’s story has transcended its evaluations. Each new adaptation of the book, from the 1925 classic silent movie starring Lon Chaney to the award-winning 1986 musical created by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe, has intrigued the public and lured them back to rediscover the original novel.

Leroux may forever be remembered as the creator of The Phantom of the Opera, but in his day, he was recognized as an innovative creator of detective and horror fiction. The only child of wellto- do shop owners, he acquired a taste for literature at an early age. Although sent to Paris to study law as a young man, he preferred to spend his time writing stories and verse; his first published work consisted of a sequence of sonnets about Parisian actresses. At the age of twenty-one, he inherited nearly one million francs from his father, but Parisian night life—drinking and gambling— quickly reduced his inheritance. Within six months he was penniless, and turned to his writing as a means of support. He became a court reporter on the staff of L’Echo de Paris, combining his legal training with his writing skills.

Tired of simply reporting court cases, Leroux launched a career as an investigative reporter by trying to solve a case before the verdict came in. “He was convinced the accused man was innocent, and the reason he was being kept under such tight security before his court appearance in the town of Bourges was to protect some incompetent officials,” explained Peter Haining in his introduction to the Dorset Press edition of The Phantom of the Opera. Passing himself off as a prison inspector, Leroux obtained access to the prisoner and interviewed him. Haining quoted Leroux from a 1925 interview: “I got my paper to publish a full report which completely exonerated the prisoner—and as a result the Prefect of Police was disgraced and the Prison Director was sent packing! Curiously, it was my newspaper colleagues who were the most annoyed. I had interviewed an accused man in prison before his trial—it was something that had never been heard of before in law reporting!”

This case established Leroux’s reputation as a reporter, and led to many other interviews with influential figures, including the Duc d’Orleans, pretender to the throne of France, and the Swedish Antarctic explorer Nils Nordenskjold. It also led to a job with Le Matin, a major daily newspaper, and assignment as a roving reporter. Over the next fifteen years, Leroux became famous for his adventurous reporting from crisis spots throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia. A master of disguise, he covered the Russian Revolution of 1905 and posed as an Arab while reporting on European imperialism in Morocco—an assignment that could have cost him his life.

Because of these escapades, Leroux became known as a reporter “who could get a story out of even the most unlikely situation,” wrote Haining. For example, in an attempt to interview British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain during the Boer War, Leroux slipped into the minister’s private study without permission. When he was discovered by a secretary and ejected, Leroux composed an article titled “How I Failed to See Chamberlain,” which, according to Haining, “delighted French readers and was widely hailed as ‘a masterpiece of good humour and wit.’” Eventually, however, Leroux tired of the traveling and hazards that his journalism demanded and turned to writing fiction and plays. Much of his work drew on his experiences as a reporter, and “right from the start,” declared Haining, “he proved himself an ingenious storyteller with a flair for pace and excitement.”

Leroux’s first success as a novelist came with the 1908 publication of The Mystery of the Yellow Room, which introduced his amateur detective hero, Joseph Rouletabille. Like the author himself, Rouletabille is a mentally sharp reporter whose reasoning ability far outpaces that of the police officers he meets. With his assistant Sainclair, Rouletabille solves one of the first “locked-room” mysteries, in which a crime is committed in a place no one could have entered or left. Leroux also wrote mysteries in which the least-likely character is cast as the culprit and is credited with introducing this plot device to the genre.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room was translated into English and established Leroux as a major figure in the field of mystery writing. “The Mystery of the Yellow Room,” wrote Howard Haycraft in 1941 in Murder for Pleasure, “is generally recognized, on the strength of its central puzzle, as one of the classic examples of the genre. For sheer plot manipulation and ratiocination—no simpler word will describe the quality of its Gallic logic—it has seldom been surpassed. It remains, after a generation of imitation, the most brilliant of all ‘locked room’ novels.”

The sequel to the The Mystery of the Yellow RoomThe Perfume of the Lady in Black—featured the second appearance of Rouletabille and confirmed his reputation as an amateur sleuth who out-thought professional detectives. Although popular, The Perfume of the Lady in Black did not receive the acclaim that had greeted The Mystery of the Yellow Room. Rupert Ranney wrote in Bookman: “The Perfume of the Lady in Black is no better than its predecessor, and it is no worse, which implies neither high praise nor serious disparagement. The faults and merits of one book are the faults and merits of the other.” Other adventures of Rouletabille failed to duplicate the success of the first volume. Leroux later penned another series of detective novels starring a magician named Cheri-Bibi.

The creator of Rouletabille, Cheri-Bibi, and numerous other intriguing characters, Leroux continued to be a prolific writer of fiction until his death in 1927. Although his creation The Phantom of the Opera currently overshadows his other works, Gaston Leroux is still remembered in the fields of detective and horror fiction for his unique contributions to these genres.

Source: Contemporary Authors Online, “Gaston Leroux,” in Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2003.

Gaston LeRoux, Faust and the Phantom

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Gaston Leroux is known to the American audience today as the author of The Phantom of the Opera, but in France he is known as one of the most popular and well read mystery writers in the country.

In April of 1907, Leroux had just returned from another exhausting journey to Morocco when the phone rang at 3 a.m. The editor of Le Matin, Maurice Bunau-Varilla, was on the line. He was ordered to take the next train to Toulon, where the largest French battleship had just sustained extensive damage in an explosion. He looked at Jeanne, at his children, at the warm bed in which he had been peacefully sleeping for the first time in weeks. With a few well chosen words to the editor, Leroux quit—hung up the phone—went back to bed and became a novelist.

He immediately began to write The Mystery of the Yellow Room. The inspiration for the novel he freely admitted, was Edgar Allen Poe’s, The Murders in the Rue Morgue (first published in Graham’s magazine in April 1841). Poe’s story had been written only 12 years after the establishment of the world’s first professional police in London. The word “detective” did not exist—at least in English until its use by Poe.

Murders in the Rue Morgue was a new form of fiction, called by Poe himself, “tales of ratiocination”. (The only example of any type of deductive reasoning in a fiction work, before that time, was Voltaire’s Zadig, published in 1748). Poe invented the gentleman-detective, who acts through his own intellect to solve a crime that has baffled the official police. The story is written in narrative as told by the reporter, and written down by a colleague.

French novels, especially mysteries, were overburdened with self analyses when Leroux announced to Jeanne that he was going to “Out-Poe-Poe,” in writing a “locked room” mystery. He certainly did. It became an overnight sensation and confirmed Leroux’s belief in himself. The only concession he had to make was to change the name of his character from the original, Boitabille, to Rouletabille—a name that would make him as famous in France, as Sherlock Holmes made Arthur Conan Doyle in England or C. Auguste Dupin made Poe in America.

After the newspaper serialization of the work, it was published in novel form by Pierre Lafitte— who, through 1924, would eventually publish 26 more volumes written by Leroux.

At some point in 1909, assured of an income, he and Jeanne and son, Miki, and daughter Madeleine (Leroux and Jeanne Cayette were still not married at this time) moved to the French Riviera and set up a home on Mont-Boron, overlooking the Casinos at Nice. It was there that he was to write his most famous novel, The Phantom of the Opera which he dedicated to Joseph, his closest brother.

The Opera Faust did not become the centerpiece of the “Phantom” story by mere chance. Just as Leroux’s avant garde use of italics to convey “thoughts” holds far-reaching action together, Eric, the Phantom is always kept in our minds while reading about scenes from the Opera. Eric is Faust turned inside out—or sideways. In Leroux’s research, he found that Faust was, at first, all that is admirable and uplifting in a man, and yet his physical appearance was hardly one that would attract a beautiful girl to love him . . . an old man. He was intelligent, giving and full of love for his fellow man until he made his pact with Satan. Then, through the medium of boredom, the line between good and evil disappeared in the self-serving life in which he had trapped himself through his bargain. He became a master of music, architecture, medicine, but with his soul now owned by Satan, the dark side became the source of his power. Erik, his counterpart, was hideous on the outside. But his mistreatment by man, from childhood, was the cause that turned him away from his God. His intelligence gave him the means to become his own law, living outside acceptable social society. As his soul got blacker and blacker, a beautiful young girl came into his life, and soon, a single act of kindness towards him destroyed the only things that kept his reality intact, the hatred of man; the belief that love did not exist in him; that there was no God and therefore no good in the world.

A theologian of the 17th century recorded meeting the real Faust at a dinner party. Faust arrived attended by two devils, in the form of a dog and a horse. Later in his story he states:

“The wretch came to an end in a terrible manner; for the Devil strangled him.”

Whomever he was, the real Faust disappeared in time to be replaced by the legend. The first publishing of the legend came from Spiess Publishers of Frankfurt in 1587. The actual title of the book?—

History of Dr. Joh. Faust, the notorious sorcerer and black-artist: How he bound himself to the Devil for a certain time: What singular adventures befell him therein, what he did and carried on until finally he received his well-deserved pay. Mostly from his own posthumous writings; for all presumptuous, rash and godless men, as a terrible example, abominable instance and well-meant warning, collected and put in print. James, IIII., Submit yourselves therefore to God: resist the Devil, and he will flee from you.

There doesn’t seem much reason to read the book once you get past the title, but apparently it was well received, reprinted several times and in every language of Europe.

From this book Christopher Marlowe obtained the material for his play “Dr. Faustus,” which appears to have been first performed in London in 1593.

This text of Faust remained the foundation of one of Europe’s most popular tales for the next 200 years until the next character in our history appears . . . Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

Goethe (pronounced Ger-ta) was born on August 28, 1749 at Frankfort-on-the-Main and he died in Weimar, (Saxony) at the age of eighty-two, on March 22, 1832.

At the age of 21, he met a 15 year old girl named Frederike Brion, the daughter of a Lutheran Pastor. Captivated by his good looks and fame as a poet, they soon had a passionate affair. No record has been found of a child born from their affair, but the very next summer Goethe left. Frederike went away for a year to a retreat. Goethe saw her only once more, three years later and even that was just a brief uncomfortable encounter at a dinner. Frederike never married and died at the age of 61.

By the mid-19th Century, Goethe’s epic poem “Faust” was a national German treasure, but it would not be a German that would eventually bring “Faust” to the Opera stage.

The Opera Faust, which plays a big part in the novel and the 1925 film, was written by Charles Gounod. When it premiered, Faust was the first notable success by a French composer in a Paris, which had for 50 years been dominated by foreign composers. The premiere, however, was not at the Paris Opera as we know it today but in a small theater. By the time Faust reached the new Place de l’Opéra in 1875, it would be in its third revision.

While Faust was being fine tuned by Gounod between 1859–1861, one of the greatest structures in the world was being considered—the setting for our story, The Paris Opéra.

Before Gounod had his first version of Faust underway there had been several changes in the Government of France and there had been no less than thirteen different National Opera Houses.

France was now governed by the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III. Although Napoleon III was responsible for the design for the city of Paris, as it exits today, he was not a popular ruler with the citizens of that time. His plan of large tree-lined boulevards which radiated like the spokes of a wheel from a cultural and governmental center were put into action, along with a modern sewer system, bridges and artificially lighted streets. The results were that the century old slums of Paris were eliminated. Most of the working class lived in those slums. While they were being continually pushed out of the city, they were also drafted into many of the foreign wars of Napoleon III in his search for new sources of wealth in Mexico and the Middle East.

In the early months of 1858, Napoleon III left the palace to attend a performance at the “Operahouse- of-the-day” which was located on the edge of the diminishing slum line. As they neared the theater several bombs exploded around the imperial carriages. The anarchist killed 150 people, but the Emperor and the Empress Eugénie were unharmed. They continued on to the performance where he was hailed for his bravery.

When he arrived back at the Palace after the performance, he summoned the city planner, Baron Haussmann, and told him it was time for a new opera house, one so grand that it would be the envy of the world [and one that would have a fortified side entrance, with plenty of room for security guards— close to the palace.]

It would take two years for the planning board to finally approve the designs of a young architect, Charles Garnier, out of almost 200 submissions.

The Opera House was conceived for not only the stage performances but also state occasions, balls and artistic festivals of all types.

The mechanics of the modern Opera House were not the only phase of creation in which Garnier showed amazing forethought. Knowing that the future of opera would demand more extravagant productions, as technology progressed, he designed a stable for horses in one of the lower basements. A long series of arch-supported ramps gave the stable master easy access. As Garnier and his talented staff were in the excitement of creation, outside world events were to bring frustration and more delays.

Napoleon’s expansion program in the Middle East was draining the countries resources. For Garnier, nine years had now gone by and still the Opera House was far from finished. In 1870, the losses caused by the Franco-Prussian war pushed the people to the breaking point. When Napoleon III’s army was defeated in the Sudan he lost the support of the upperclass and was exiled. A new republic was declared by the parliament, but this was not enough. Prussia marched into France and encircled the capital, when the new government was unable to pay the war debt caused by Napoleon III. Inside Paris, the working class took the law into their own hands and formed their own army called the Communards, in an attempt to oust the temporary government.

The first place chosen for the headquarters of the Communards was the unfinished Opera House. Built like a fortress and centrally located, it was stored with ammunition, food and wine. The Prussian siege lasted a year and a half. Food began to run out. The animals of Napoleon III’s zoo were slaughtered for those willing to pay the price, and for those who could not, there were the cats, dogs and rats of the sewer. Finally, the National Guard was moved into action. Not only would they rid the city of the Communards but they ran out the “New Republic”. The Communards were no match for the well armed National Guard and they were soon routed, but not without attempts to destroy the great creations of the past. The Louvre was set on fire as well as the magnificent Hotel de Ville. The Opera House became a prison for the enemies of the people.

France now had its Third Republic and it was to take three more years before construction resumed on the Opera House. First, the sanitation crews had to remove the remains of the slaughtered animals and dead prisoners. The immense basements and lower labyrinths made it impossible to find all of the prisoners and many died and rotted in forgotten dungeons. Rumors began to spread of ghosts of former soldiers and of forgotten prisoners, reduced to animalistic levels from their isolation in the dark cellars for so many years.

Finally in January of 1875, the “Gala Opening” of the Opera was announced. After years of waiting, Garnier was now rushing to meet the deadline. Many areas had not even been painted! The musicians faced a Wagnerian orchestra pit for the first time and almost went on strike. They were used to being seen by the audience along with the action on stage. Being a politically promoted affair, no one dared protest. The new French government wanted to show the rest of the world that Paris had not only changed for the better, but it was again, the center of world arts. Garnier, after all his labor, was given a seat with the public instead of a place of honor.

One of Garnier’s admirers was the newspaper journalist, Gaston Leroux, who had settled down to write novels, rather than continue the timeconsuming and dangerous life of a reporter. Through one of his many contacts from those press days, he gained permission to explore the depths of the Opera House.

With a few guides, Leroux covered the upper scene docks, admired the beauty and subtle art, the frescos and statues. Then he wished to go into the lower levels, almost 70 feet down into the ground. There was little or no light and few who would even dare glance at the door to the levels below, let alone go through it. Some levels had not been inspected for 25 years.

He remembered the hundreds of prisoners who had died there during the Franco-Prussian war. The maze of labyrinths amazed him and possibly the thought that “the man who designed all of this must be in a madhouse” planted the seed for a fascinating villain. Early notes on the Phantom indicate just that. Leroux imagined a child who had been forgotten when the Commune prisoners were freed. The boy eventually went mad and made the underworld his home. Maybe as an adult he became an architect who purposely designed all types of secret rooms, with the intent of using the old torture chambers on any accidental visitors who stumbled into his hidden rooms.

At various times, his attention was broken by a call from his friend, who was moving on to a new area. When they reached the lower levels, the dampness became more prominent. They came upon the lake, five stories below the opera stage. It was nearly full and could only be viewed from above through barred grills. He was shown the mechanisms by which the lake could be drained and the walls inspected. When this was done, the lofty arches were exposed and the workmen used a small boat to travel from area to area. It was rumored that there was a secret room, now under water, that could only be entered when the lake was drained. It was at this level that a morbid discovery was made. He was about to join his guide, when he stumbled upon the remains and bones of the victims of the torture chambers. His foot kicked a skull as he scrambled to remove himself from this ghastly vision! Once he regained his composure the opera ghost was born. (Fact, or just legend propagated by Leroux’s wonderful sense of humor?)

In the eerie underworld of the Opera House, Leroux began to formulate what type of person could survive in such a morbid tomb-like land of shadows. Certainly, a prisoner of this darkness would eventually be driven insane. Years of journalism and practicality imbedded in Leroux, kept him from the consideration of making his Phantom a real monster, (in the manner of Stoker’s Dracula). So it would have to be a character within the realms of possibility.

Leroux always kept a large library. Consulting his medical reference books he noted the effects on the human body when deprived of sunlight, clean water and sanitary conditions over a period of years. Leprosy was one disease that came from these conditions, but it usually occurred in tropical areas. Also in 1909, he had obtained copies of recently published papers from London, in which, Dr. Treves’ patient Joseph Merrick, known as the Elephant Man, was finally diagnosed as having von Recklinghausen’s neurofibromatosis. Although Dr. Treves’ own account of Joseph Merrick were not published until 1923, one of the transcripts in Leroux’s library told how Merrick cried when a woman visitor politely shook hands with him. The overwhelming emotion taxed his weak heart to the point where he almost had a seizure and died from the joy of the moment. It was the first time that a woman had ever smiled at him and shaken his hand. The horrible deformities of the Elephant Man were too much. Leroux’s character had to draft blueprints, draw and be athletic. The hand shaking incident, however, gave him some insight as to how kindness affects one whose life has been littered with abuse and rejection due to his physical appearance.

It was to a visit by an unnamed physician, a guest of Leroux’s, that he credits the physical and mental requirements of his mad-genius.

A disease, which is known today as congenital porphyria produced tragic symptoms in its sufferers. The disease itself becomes progressively worsened by exposure to sunlight. In an early German medical Journal supplement called Strahlentherapie, he discovered photographs of the victims, plus descriptions of the symptoms. An excerpt from The Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine #57 published in 1964 provides some insight:

1. Severe photosensitivity in which a vesicular erytheman is produced by the action of the light.

2. There is a tendency for the skin lesions to ulcerate, and these ulcers may attack cartilage and bone. Over a period of years, structures such as nose, ears, eyelids, and lips undergo progressive mutilation.

3. Hypertrichosis of pigmentation may develop.

4. The teeth may be red or reddish brown due to the deposition of porphyrins.

5. Nervous manifestations may be referable to any part of the nervous system, and include mental disorders ranging form mild hysteria to manicdepressive psychoses and delirium.

6. In cases a jaundice produces pale yellowish excoriated skin.

The plausible yet horrible figure of an architect, once a prisoner of the Commune, who had been hired to design and create the underground labyrinths, formed in Leroux’s imagination through these medical studies. Much like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Moriarity, this person’s madness would also be his genius. Yet, if he were to contract this nervous disease, his symptoms would be a gradual mental breakdown, whereupon the mechanical training of the mind would remain, while the reasoning would cause whatever was happening at any particular moment to become the total of his reality. His physical characteristics would be, in layman’s terms, loss of muscle bulk, which would make him almost skeletal. The jaundice would turn his skin pale yellow. Exposure to sunlight would cause the loss of his ears, nose, lips, eyelids, hair and cause the teeth to turn reddish brown.

That took care of the outer appearance. For the inner workings of Erik, he went back to the original Faust and developed a mind corrupted by evil and lack of discipline. But the lack of sympathy bothered him. Even Faust was redeemed in the legend.

Other pieces of the story were now beginning to fire his imagination. He remembered an accident at the Opera that had occurred in 1896 while he was still a reporter for Le Matin. During the first act of Thétis and Pélée, the cable, holding an 800 pound counterweight that was used for balancing the great chandelier, snapped due to an electrical short and crushed a woman to death. He imagined what would happen if the whole chandelier were to fall.

As the story line became clearer, the idea of an architect did not hold as much romance as that of a musician. What better than to have a mad genius who was not only an architect, but a musician as well; who used the old rumors of the commune ghosts as a means to keep people away from his hidden home. Then came the problem of motive. After taking such great pains to hide from society, what would bring this mad disfigured person up from his dark world?

The French classic Beauty and the Beast provided that answer. Love! Could the unbalanced nature of the Phantom be overcome by the love of a woman? Could his heroine—Beauty—be able to overcome the horrible appearance of the Beast to see the true inner beauty that he possessed?

AND. . . The object of the Phantom’s affections could not be just a member of the ballet troupe or opera chorus. She would have to be a well known and beloved performer. Now . . . How could he work in the wonderfully dramatic chandelier tragedy?

Going back in his studies of the Opera House history, he found the progression of Faust. He found Mlle Carvalho, upon whom he based his Prima Donna, Carlotta; Carlotta’s stranglehold on her husband, the manager of the Opera, plus the record of Carlotta having the understudy fired because her voice was better than her own. He now had his heroine, Christine Daaé, (pronounced Diea) a protégée, who would rise from a mere understudy to the Phantom’s personal Prima Donna! AND . . . If the Opera Company did not comply with his wishes to present her voice to the Paris audience, here was the motive to drop the chandelier!

In staying within his literary history style, he even mentions Mlle Carvalho and his character Carlotta in the same paragraph, with references to the Théâtre Lyrique, where Faust was first performed. In the introductory paragraphs about Christine, he has Gounod, himself, conducting selections as Christine sings.

The gallant soldier Raoul De Chagny [pronounced Rah-ool Dee Shah-n-yay] provided the Phantom with an antagonist. But Raoul alone was not quite strong enough for such a powerful villain. Enter the Persian! With the Persian, a whole chapter of Leroux’s past experiences in Morocco became available.

The opening of the mystery needed something special. Borrowing the name of the favorite performer of Méphistophélès for the period, M. Faure, Leroux had satisfied the public’s expectations for an “official police Inspector” such as Doyle’s Lestrade and for private “detectives” (such as Doyle’s, Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allen Poe’s, C. Auguste Dupin) who would manage to solve the crime while the police stood by baffled.

Leroux now put himself into the story as the narrator. No longer would this be a mystery, but a report of an actual tragic, real-life occurrence. Inserting his massive file of facts, research and documented material into the plot, he presents it as a journalist would successfully giving the reader the proof that “The Opera Ghost really existed . . . ”

The world respected the factual details of Leroux’s newspaper articles. His ability to capture whole battlefield scenes in just a few paragraphs for his newspaper articles, and his vivid memory, worked much to his credibility in presenting his report of the Opera mystery. It was, however, not a “gimmick” that provides the thrills experienced by his fans for over 75 years, but his exceptionally visual style.

Leroux’s remarkable ability to paint with words, gives you the feeling that you are standing alone in an empty theater not quite sure which shadow is a deranged maniac and which shadow is just. . . . .a shadow.

Near the end of 1909 Leroux completed the novel that was to bring him world-wide fame.

Source: Philip J. Riley, “Gaston LeRoux, Faust and the Phantom,” in The Making of “The Phantom of the Opera,” MagicImage Filmbooks, 1999, pp. 21–29.

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