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The Book
Gaston Leroux was a French newspaperman before he was a novelist. He
covered the courts and went abroad as a correspondent, and then he turned
to writing mysteries; his Mystery of the Yellow Room is one of the
famous locked-room puzzles. Le Fantôme de
l'Opéra ran as a serial in a Paris newspaper, Le Gaulois,
and came out as a book in 1910. The first English translation came the
next year. He died in 1927, two years after Lon Chaney made his story into
a movie.
The opera house in the book is real: the Paris Opera, the big gilded
one, finished in 1875. And it really does have water underneath it. The
builders hit so much groundwater digging the foundations that they ended
up with a great tank under the building, and that is where Leroux put his
lake. I love that. The most unbelievable part of the story is the true
part.
A warning if you go looking for it at the library: it is not a romance
novel. It is a mystery, told by a narrator who says he has interviewed the
people involved and gone through the papers, and who insists the Opera
Ghost really existed. It's creepy and funny by turns, and it wanders. Some
chapters are about the managers fussing over money. Some are about trapdoors.
It took me two tries to get through it, and I'm glad I did.
Side by Side
I've kept spoilers out of this table as well as I can, but if you've
never seen the show or read the book, you may want to stop here and come
back after.
| In the book |
In the show |
| The Phantom |
| He has a name: Erik. His whole face is like a skull, and he wears a mask over all of it. He is a genius at music, building, ventriloquism and tricks of every kind, and he once built secret passages for a shah in Persia. |
He is never called anything but the Phantom. Only one side of his face is disfigured, and the famous white half-mask covers it. Still a genius, still dangerous, but the show lets you feel for him more. |
| Christine |
| Christine Daaé is Swedish, the daughter of a country fiddler who told her that when he died he would send her the Angel of Music. She believes it when a voice comes to her through the wall of her dressing room. |
The same Angel of Music and the same father, the violinist. The show doesn't make much of her being Swedish, but she is just as torn between the voice and the boy she loved as a child. |
| Raoul and his family |
| Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny, has an older brother, Count Philippe, who disapproves of Christine. Raoul is young and brave and a bit of a weeper. |
No brother. Raoul is the opera's new patron and a good deal more dashing. I don't miss Philippe. |
| The Persian |
| A mysterious man from Persia who knew Erik in the old days, knows his tricks, and goes down into the cellars with Raoul. In my opinion, the most interesting person in the book. |
Gone completely. I understand why, since you can only fit so much into one evening, but I'd love to see him on a stage someday. |
| The opera house people |
| The managers are Richard and Moncharmin. Madame Giry is the box-keeper who looks after Box Five, the Ghost's box. Carlotta is the vain prima donna. |
The managers are Firmin and André. Madame Giry runs the ballet girls. Box Five is still his, and Carlotta is still Carlotta, only funnier. |
| The chandelier |
| It falls during a performance, and someone in the audience is killed. |
It falls at the end of the first act, and nearly takes the front rows with it. Every single time, I jump. |
| The masked ball |
| He comes dressed as the Red Death, and the whole ball goes quiet. |
The same Red Death, at the top of the second act, on that great staircase full of masks. The most beautiful stage picture I know. |
| His opera |
| For years he has been composing his own opera, Don Juan Triumphant. |
The show kept the title, and in the second act the company actually performs it. |
| Under the opera house |
| The lake, the house on the lake, and a hall of mirrors built as a torture chamber. Near the end, Erik gives Christine a terrible choice between two little figures, a scorpion and a grasshopper. I'll say no more. |
The lake, the boat, the candles rising out of the water. No torture chamber and no scorpion, but the choice at the end is just as terrible in its own way. |
| The ending |
| Quieter, stranger and sadder than the show's, and it goes on after you think it's over. I won't spoil it. |
I won't spoil this one either. I will only say that I have never once made it through the last ten minutes with dry eyes. |
And on Film
The 1925 silent film, with Lon Chaney as Erik, is the one to see. Chaney
did his own makeup, and the scene where Christine pulls off his mask at the
organ is still one of the great frights in the movies. The masked ball is
in early color, which surprised me the first time. There's also a 1943
version in color, which is handsome to look at, but it's
much more of an opera picture and much less of a ghost story. If you can
only see one, see Chaney.
Which Should You Do First?
See the show first. Then read the book. The show will give you the
music to hum in your head while you read, which is the only place I
allow humming. (See Phantom Etiquette.)
Back to The Music of the Night Shift
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