The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux

"You do not go back to a tomb and a corpse who loves you ... Perhaps, after all, he was still, if only slightly, the Angel of Music and would have embodied it perfectly, had God made him beautiful instead of clothing him in rotten flesh." -- Christine Daae, in The Phantom of the Opera (p. 148)

I was picking a selection from Phantom of the Opera (1909) to be read at my Halloween program this fall, when I suddenly went, "Wait a minute, I've never read it! How did this HAPPEN? What have I been doing with my life?"

The book's structure is, like Dracula's found-document one, unexpectedly modern. In this case, Leroux uses his experience as a journalist to frame the events as if they're a documentary history, based on interviews and current reportage. Even when the events are totally unbelievable, the verisimilitude is there, and it's no surprise that readers tended to believe it was at least based on real events. Especially since the opening sentence is "The Phantom of the Opera did exist," and the second paragraph calmly starts out "When I consulted the archives of the National Academy of Music..." (5).

The plot is mostly familiar from the various adaptations. There's a Phantom (named Erik) at the Paris Opera, promoting a young singer with whom he's obviously in love, and he's willing to ruin or murder anyone who gets in his way, although, in the end, he becomes a figure of pathos. Heroine Christine, gullible even for a pious orphan, seems to really believe that the disembodied Voice that gives her singing lessons is a literal "Angel of Music," thanks to the allegorical mysticism her father used to talk about.

I was surprised that she's a lot more into the Phantom here than I remember her being in the film adaptations (although I know nothing of the musical version, so can't speak to that). Maybe there's a Stockholm Syndrome thing going on, but their connection through music is pretty strong, and the Phantom understands a lot more how important it is to her than does Raoul, the juvenile lead and rival for her affection. Even when he finally kidnaps her and she famously rips of his mask, as she must, she has a lot of sympathy for him. It's obviously not the making of a healthy relationship, though; near death, Erik gushes later that "I ...I kissed her! I did! I kissed her! And she did not die of horror!" That's a low bar, but he does go on about how even "my own poor, unhappy mother ... never let me kiss her -- she recoiled from me and made me cover my face" (172). Despite his numerous horrible deeds, there's a Frankenstein-ish undertone that he may have only become a monster because everyone treated him as one.

Along the way, there's much interesting material about the opera company, including an opera called Le Roi de Lahore, tying into the subplot that Erik had traveled the world, learned the arts of assassination in India, and worked devising torture rooms for a sadistic "sultana," before bringing his skills in music, murder, and secret architecture back to Paris.

The Phantom of the cover of the Penguin Classics edition struck me as rather more dapper and jovial than I expected, but turns out, this was the cover image on the first book publication in 1910, so this mask may be more canonical than the ones I'm used to.

Leroux, Gaston. The Phantom of the Opera. Translated and edited by Mireille Ribière: with an Introduction by Jann Matlock. Penguin Classics: Cambridge (England), 2012.