Episode #24: Leroux's Phantom

Welcome to Jennifer's latest obsession:  The Phantom of the Opera.  Her sister forced her to watch the 25th Anniversary stage production at Royal Albert Hall from 2011, and she fell hard for the show.   To learn more she read the original novel by Gaston Leroux, she watched a couple of classic film adaptations from 1925 and 1943, and basically immersed herself in all things Phantom.  Before she realized that Leroux's book was published in 1910 she lamented the fact that Phantom as a topic wasn't a fit for Circa Sunday Night--it was too Victorian, which is a little south of Circa 19xx Land.  But when she discovered that no!  the story had been serialized in 1909 and ultimately published as a stand-alone novel in 1910, she literally exclaimed aloud, "Bingo!"  This little book is right in our neighborhood...and now it's right on our show.  In tonight's episode, we go deep into Leroux's invented world and watch as Jennifer's heart breaks all over again upon revisiting the Phantom's sorrowful tale.  You just never know where we're going to end up on this show.  This time, we're in Paris, at the opulent Palais Garnier.  Is there a better place to be?

Cool Links
Palais Garnier Video Tour
Palais Garnier Website   
The Mystery of the Yellow Room, BBC4 The Saturday Play (1998)
Daily Telegraph Article on Gaston Leroux
Scenes from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom

Circa 19xx Land
Follow Jennifer on Instagram!
Circa19xx.com
Meet Jennifer

Transcript

Episode 24:  LeReaux’s Phantom

Cold Open:  For several months, there had been nothing discussed at the Opera but this ghost in dress clothes who stalked about the building, from top to bottom, like a shadow, who spoke to no one, to whom no one dared speak, and who vanished as soon as he was seen, no one knowing how or where.  

Now, you meet so many men in dress clothes at the Opera who are NOT ghosts.  But this dress suit had a peculiarity of its own.  It covered a skeleton.  At least, so the ballet girls said.  And, of course, it had a death’s head.

Was all this serious?  The truth is that the idea of the skeleton came from the description of the ghost given by Joseph Buquet, the chief scene-shifter, who had really seen the ghost.  He had run up against the ghost on the little staircase, by the footlights, which leads to the cellars.  He had seen him for only a second—for the ghost had fled.  “He is extraordinary thin,” Buquet would tell anyone who would listen.  “and his dress coat hangs on a skeleton frame.  His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils.  You just see two big black holes, as in a dead man’s skull.  His skin, which is stretched across his bones like a drumhead, is not white, but a nasty yellow.  His nose is so little worth talking about that you can’t see it—and the absence of that nose is a horrible thing to look at.  All the hair he has is three or four long dark locks on his forehead and behind his ears.

[Cough]  We certainly have a looker here, don’t we, ladies?  So that was from Gaston LeReaux’s 1910 novel, The Phantom of the Opera, and that flattering description is the world’s first introduction to Erik, the shadow man at the Palais Garnier—Paris’s famous Opera House.  I’ve developed a crazy fascination for this story, so tonight we’re going to hang out with this dapper bachelor in his magical subterranean world.   There’s a lot to explore, so hey, somebody, how about that theme song?

Well, hello there!  I’m so glad to see you!  Now that always seems like a weird thing to say—this being an audio-only podcast and all.  But, did you know that when I’m sitting here at the microphone, I really do picture you sitting in front of me listening.  I have to do that.  Otherwise, it’s just too weird, talking to myself in an empty room.

Oh, wait.  I’m not in an empty room.  Olive is here.  But she’s nearly asleep.  It’s late as I’m recording this and she curled up in a circle in her little bed right here by my feet.  

But anyway, I picture you sitting right in front of me listening—and wow, are you a terrific audience.  You are hanging on my every word, leaning in so as not to miss anything, nodding now and then to signal that I have said something brilliant of which you approve.  It’s great.

I’m making some fun, here, but I really am so glad you tuned in this evening.   I’m going to ask you again to please leave this podcast a 5-star review on Apple podcasts.  I feel so gross asking that.  I know as a podcaster I’m supposed to do that.  Maybe it will get easier over time.  If you would do that, it would mean the world to me.  Also, I hope you’ll pop over to Instagram and follow me there.  I have almost no following over there, so if you come on by, I WILL notice you.  Most podcasters have such big followings on social media that you are just one little follow in the crowd.  Not so, in my case!  

Oh, and because I release new podcast episodes in so unpredictable a manner, if you follow me on Instagram you’ll always know when a new one comes out.   I’ve also put a few videos out there, too.  I’m trying to learn how to do video, so if you want to see some cringe-worthy video clips, feel free to head on over. You can find me on Instagram at Circa19xx_Jennifer.  There’s a link in the show notes below.

Oh, and welcome new listeners!  Hello also to Meg in Pensacola, Devin in Evanston, Alehandro in Amarillo, Lori in Broomsfield, and Jennifer in Lakeland.  They are listeners who messaged me after our last episode.  I’m so glad you’re here! The last episode, our “Halloween Spooktacular,” brought in more new listeners than any other episode to date.  Let that be a lesson to any of you who might be trying to grow your own podcast audience:  Halloween is a big draw!  

[Musical interlude].

Enough of all that.  I have to tell you about something that happened to me last night.  Something so startling happened that I’m not sure what to make of it. And I am interested in what you might think about this.  It was about—oh, maybe 10:30 or so, and I had taken Olive outside for potty.  She was sniffing around, doing her thing in the little greenway across from my house.  I just happened to turn to look back at the house, when I saw this superfast light streak across the sky.  It was so unbelievably fast and bright—I don’t even know if it lasted a full second—and then it was gone.  But it was definitely something.  I thought maybe it was a shooting star, but it seemed lower than the stars and so fast.  I mean it just stopped me in my tracks.  Later I checked out the news to see if anyone had reported anything.  There wasn’t a word about it.  So, was it a UFO?  No, probably not.  There’s probably a simple explanation—but still, it was weird.

So, of course, now when we go out—even today while the sun was out--I’m scanning the sky the whole time.  I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary, but the sky is so amazing.  Even tonight, I can see stars out my window.  I live far enough away from the city center that there isn’t a lot of light pollution and on a clear night I can see a beautiful, expansive star field overhead.  It’s one of the things I love best about where I live.  I also live along a flight path to the Kansas City airport, so planes come and go all the time.  This wasn’t a plane.  Now I have to point out that I didn’t see a CRAFT or anything—just a light.  But it got me to thinking about all the mysteries there are in the world—and from a larger sense, the universe.  

God is so awesome, isn’t He?  I love having things to wonder about.

[Musical interlude]

Well, I am on vacation this week.  I love vacation so much.  I’m just staying home this time, doing homey stuff.  But, you know what’s rough about vacation at this stage in my career?  It makes me long for retirement.  Retirement is my last dream, and while it is getting closer, I’m still years away.  Vacation is lovely, but you always have to go back to reality, and that’s the tragedy in it.  You know what I’ve been doing?  Reading, baking, going for walks, listening to my music.  Oh, and planning.  I’m thinking about season 3 of Circa Sunday Night, and what the next stage of its evolution will be.  I love this show.  I really do.  But I’m still working it out.  Even after two years, I’m still learning about podcasting.

Oh, and you know what else I’ve been thinking about?  Florida.  I haven’t been to Florida since July, and I’m getting homesick for it!  I’m planning my next trip—which will NOT be to Disney World.  Yes, I will be going to Disney World in 2022, but I have another destination in mind for early 2022.  Is there anything more exciting than planning a fun trip?  That was a trick question with only one possible answer:  No, there is not!

[Musical interlude]

Shall we FINALLY get to tonight’s show.  Welcome, friends, to my current obsession:  The Phantom of the Opera.  Now, I realize the timing of this topic is weird.  On the surface it may seem better suited to our Halloween show, which was the last episode of Circa Sunday Night.  But this topic fell very unexpectedly into my lap, and I just couldn’t let go of it, so here we are.  And, it isn’t so much scary like those segments we explored last time as it is an examination of a story that has so many fantastic elements—both real and fictional—that we just HAVE to dig deeper.   There is so much to talk about here.

So how is it that Phantom wound up as a topic for Circa Sunday Night?  Well, it all began when my sister Sue and my niece Mary came over to my house with a DVD in hand that Sue had checked out of the local library where she works.  It was the 25th Anniversary performance of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Phantom of the Opera in London at the Royal Albert Hall.  This was performed back in 2011, and apparently it was streamed live to movie theaters around the world.  This particular version starred Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom and Sierra Boggess as Christine Daae, the two principle characters in the story.  Sue and Mary were in raptures over this show, telling me I had to see it—that my life wouldn’t be complete until I saw that show.

Let me stop right there.  At this point in the story, I wanted to run for cover.  For one thing, I don’t like musicals in general.  This surprises a lot of people.  I seem like a person who would love them, right?  I mean, look at all the music I fold into this show.  But no, I really don’t like them.  There are a few exceptions, but very few.  Also, I’ve been burned before by recommendations from others.  A few years ago Sue told me that I absolutely had to see LaLa Land or I would die.  It turned out that just the opposite was true—I nearly died of boredom when I did watch it.  To this day I really can’t stand that movie.  That was a musical.  Several years ago my friend LeAnn recommended that one movie—oh, what was it.   It was a musical with Nicole Kidman.  Hmmm.  LeAnn, if you’re listening, you’re probably yelling at your device right now.  Oh, Moulin Rouge!  Mouline Rouge!   Again, I thought it was just so terrible.  Remember that, LeAnn?

Anyway, I never thought much about Phantom, but I was familiar with the music, so I relented and watched it.  That was the most moving, heartbreakingly beautiful show I’ve ever seen.  I NEVER cry at movies, and I was moved to tears by this story.  Sue, Mary, and I stayed up until 1:00 in the morning doing what I love the most—dissecting and analyzing every part of the story.  From there, I wanted to know more, so I read the original 1910 novel by Gaston LeRoux, I watched the 1925 silent version of the film, I read everything I could get my hands on about LeRoux, about the Paris Opera house, about the famous chandelier, the subtarrean lake under the Opera House (yes, there really is one), and now I have all this stuff in my head.  I had always thought the book had come out in the mid-to-late 1800s, which is too early for Circa 19xx Land;  when I discovered that no, the book had been serialized in 1909 and then published as a stand-alone work in 1910, I was like BINGO!  We’re covering this on Circa Sunday Night.

I’m really excited about tonight’s show.  I hope you are, too.  Warning:  If you’re not familiar with Phantom and want to either read the book or watch the show yourself, I would do that first, and then come back to tonight’s episode, because there are going to be spoilers left and right.  But if you’re ready to come along, let’s go.

Jump in the time machine…we’re heading for the turn of the last century…where we’ll meet the man behind the legend, Gaston LeRoux.  Actually, wait.  No, first I want to pop into the jaw-droppingly beautiful setting of LeRoux’s tale:  The Palais Garnier.  Paris, here we come!

[Time machine sounds, leading into Danse Macabre Clip 1].

Ah, we have arrived.  We’re standing directly in front of the opera house, looking up at the principal façade, and it’s so beautiful and appeals to my aesthetic so perfectly that it seems like it can’t be real.  I mean, there’s a crown on top.  A crown.  In fact there’s all kinds of magic happening at the top of the building, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves and start our imaginary tour at ground level.  

From this view the building has three tiers, stacked one on top of another.  The first tier, at ground level, consists of a row of arches.  Each arch is decorated with sculptures representing poetry, instrumental music, the idyll, the cantata, the song, drama, the dance, and lyric drama.  At the center of this first tier are four circular medallions representing the composers Back, Pergolesi, Haydn, and Cimarosa  

The second tier of the façade consists of columns that, at the top of each, contain bronze busts of composers that include Rossini, Auber, Beethoven, Mozart, Spontini, Meyerbeer, and Halevy.

The third tier contains sculptural motifs representing architecture and industry on one end and painting and sculpture on the other.  This tier also contains comedy and tragedy masks.

On the very top…oh my.  There are gilded angels of poetry and harmonie (Let’s remember this, as the “Angel of Music” is an important element of Phantom of the Opera.)  And, of course there is the crown, which, honestly, may not even be a real crown;  I haven’t read that it is described that way—but it certainly looks like a crown to me.  It’s a round gilt copper round cushion shaped roof that has a green patina.  Atop the crown is another sculpture of Apollo holding up his lyre, along with two other figures representing poetry and music.  By the way, I’ll have a link in the show notes to the Palais Garnier website, which has virtual tours—include views from the rooftop, where you can see an amazing view of Paris, including the Eiffel Tower.

Are you catching on here that there is a lot of figural symbolism here?  There can be no mistaking this structure for something utilitarian like a train station or something.  No, this is a cathedral to the performing arts.

Something that captures my attention here that I need to point out is the presence of color.  There are different pastel colors of marble on the façade—little splashes of pink and blue-gray.  And of course, the bronze and brilliant gold gilding, and that green copper crown.  So unbelievably pretty and ornate.

Ok, we’ll go in in a moment, but let’s talk about the history for a moment.  It was designed by the French architect Charles Garnier, the winner of a design competition held by Napoleon III.  He had been seeking an architect to design plans for a new opera house that would replace an older one that had stood since before the Revolution.  Contestants had one month to submit their applications, and Garnier, who was 34 at the time and had not yet made a name for himself, was selected from among 171 other entries.

Construction began in 1861, and, as you might expect, there were setbacks almost from the very beginning.  During the first week of excavation, and underground stream was discovered, which was unsuitable for the massive foundation that was to be built.  It took 8 months for the water to be pumped out, though enough was left to enable operation of hydraulic stage machinery.  Garnier designed a double-walled sealed cement and concrete foundation that would withstand any leakages, so construction continued.  (Again, let’s remember this.  There really IS a lake under the Paris Opera House, which again, plays a role in Phantom of the Opera).

The Opera was finally finished and opened 1875.  The first opera performed there was Fromental Halevy’s work, La Juve, or “The Jewess,” which tells the tragic tale of a forbidden love affair between a Jewish girl and a Christian prince.  I was unfamiliar with this story, but wow, it sounds like a downer.  A couple of people—including Rachel, the young Jewish girl at the center of this story—end up boiled alive in a caldron.  Yikes.  This was a popular opera at the time, but has fallen into virtual obscurity since the 1930s and is rarely performed today.

Let’s listen to an aria from La Juve.  Wait!  Now, I know some of you who are not in love with Opera are already reaching for your phone to fast forward ahead.  I myself am not a huge Opera fan—although I don’t hate it.  In my college days I went through a period when I was really into Bizet’s Carmen.  But I know almost nothing about Opera.  But remember we are trying to get a feel for what that first audience at the Paris Opera House experienced.  Also, it wouldn’t hurt any of us to get a little exposure to Opera.  This clip is four and a half minutes long.  Yes, kind of long, but I want you to close your eyes, and imagine yourself in the theater.  And if you already love Opera, well, I’m about to make your day!

What we’re going to hear is a 1920 recording of Caruso singing “Rachel!  Kahn du Sin Yur.”  This is from Act 4.  Caruso is playing the part of Eleazar Rachel’s father, here.  Here’s what’s going on:  Rachel has been condemned to death by Cardinal de Bronyee for consorting with the Christian prince Leopold.  But what Bronyee doesn’t know is that Rachel is actually his own daughter, who was saved from a fire in Rome years ago by Eleazar and raised as his daughter.  Eleazar knows he can save her life by revealing this fact and if Rachel changes her faith.  But he is struggling to reconcile his own Jewish faith with forcing his daughter to change her faith.  So, there is a lot of angst in this aria.

[Clip 3 – Rachel]

Are you still with me?  That wasn’t so bad, was it?  Certainly no worse than listening me try to pronounce French words.  Actually, I thought that was rather beautiful.

Now let’s wonder around the theater interior.  I can’t possibly describe how visually rich and magical this place is.  It’s like something out of a fairy tale.  I’m going to link a video tour of the Paris Opera House in the show notes.  

Video Tour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWk2taHjrqo 

Palais Garnier Website

https://www.operadeparis.fr/en/visits/palais-garnier  

I’ve never actually been there, but in looking at the pictures, I would love to just go exploring it all by myself with no crowds, you know what I mean?   Just me and the echo of my footsteps to keep me company.  Wow, wouldn’t that be awesome. 

There are four features of the Opera House that I want to call out: 

·        The Grand Staircase

·        The Grand Foyer

·        The Chandelier

·        The Lake

To make things easy, I’m going straight to Wikipedia for descriptions, starting with the Grand Staircase.

[Background old orchestra music?]

The large ceremonial staircase is constructed of white marble with a balustrade of red and green marble, which divides into two divergent flights of stairs that lead to the Grand Foyer. The pedestals of the staircase are decorated with female torchères. The ceiling above the staircase is painted to depict The Triumph of Apollo, The Enchantment of Music Deploying its Charms, Minerva Fighting Brutality Watched by the Gods of Olympus, and The City of Paris Receiving the Plan of the New Opéra. When the paintings were first fixed in place two months before the opening of the building, it was obvious to Garnier that they were too dark for the space. The artists had to rework the canvases while they were in place overhead on the ceiling.

Now let’s move onto the Foyer.

The Foyer was designed to act as a drawing room for Paris society. Its ceiling paintings represent various moments in the history of music. The foyer opens onto an outside loggia and is flanked by two octagonal salons. The salons open to the north into the Salon de la Lune at the western end of the Avant-Foyer and the Salon du Soleil at its eastern end.

Now, where is that famous chandelier?  It’s in the auditorium.

The auditorium has a traditional Italian horseshoe shape and can seat 1,979. The stage is the largest in Europe and can accommodate as many as 450 performers. The canvas house curtain was painted to represent a draped curtain, complete with tassels and braid.

The ceiling area which surrounds the chandelier was originally painted by Eugène Lenepveu, and it is classical in design in keeping with the rest of the Opera.  I really wish they would have kept it that way.  But in 1964 Marc Chagall painted a new chandelier surround—which is lovely in its own way, but seems pretty incongruent with all of the other paintings.  It’s just too modern for that setting, in my opinion.  Chagall’s painting is actually on a removable frame over the original painting.  It depicts scenes from operas by 14 composers, Mussorgsky, Mozart, Wagner, Berlioz, Rameau, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Adam, Bizet, Verdi, Beethoven and Gluck.

The seven-ton bronze and crystal chandelier was designed by Garnier. The total cost came to 30,000 gold francs. The use of a central chandelier aroused controversy, and it was criticised for obstructing views of the stage by patrons in the fourth level boxes and views of the ceiling painted by Lenepveu. Garnier defended his choice, saying "What else could fill the theatre with such joyous life? What else could offer the variety of forms that we have in the pattern of the flames, in these groups and tiers of points of light, these wild hues of gold flecked with bright spots, and these crystalline highlights?”

Now, in Phantom of the Opera the Phantom causes the Chandelier to fall in one of the most famous and dramatic scenes in the story.  So, is there any truth to that legend?  Actually, yes.  On May 20 1896, one of the chandelier's counterweights broke free and burst through the ceiling into the auditorium, killing a concierge.

And what about that lake?  In Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom lives in a house on the lake below the Opera House.  He whisks Christine, the ingenue he has mentored and ultimately falls in love with, down into the Opera House cellars and they take a gondola to his underground lair.  Is there really a lake down there?  Well, yes—sort of.  I really couldn’t believe that when I found out.  You can see pictures of it on the Palais Garnier website and, well, all over the Internet.

Let’s go back to Wikipedia:

On January 13 1862 the first concrete foundations were poured, starting at the front and progressing sequentially toward the back, with the laying of the substructure masonry beginning as soon as each section of concrete was cast. The opera house needed a much deeper basement in the substage area than other building types, but the level of the groundwater was unexpectedly high. Wells were sunk in February 1862 and eight steam pumps installed in March, but despite operating continuously 24 hours a day, the site would not dry up. To deal with this problem Garnier designed a double foundation to protect the superstructure from moisture. It incorporated a water course and an enormous concrete cistern (cuve) which would both relieve the pressure of the external groundwater on the basement walls and serve as a reservoir in case of fire. A contract for its construction was signed on 20 June. Soon a persistent legend arose that the opera house was built over a subterranean lake, inspiring Gaston Leroux to incorporate the idea into his novel The Phantom of the Opera. On 21 July the cornerstone was laid at the southeast angle of the building's facade. In October the pumps were removed, the brick vault of the cistern was finished by November 8, and the substructure was essentially complete by the end of the year.

OK, so now we know something of the setting of LeReax’s novel.  But one more thing:  Was there really a phantom there?  LeReaux insisted—until his dying day—that there was.  Oh, and one other thing:  there really are tunnels and passages built into the structure.

So, let’s recap key elements from this mysterious and wonderful opera house:

·        It’s massive, ornate, opulent, and stunningly beautiful.  

·        It sits atop a kind of lake.

·        It was said to have been haunted by a mysterious stranger.

·        It was decorated with numerous figures representing music and the performing arts (“Angels of Music” you might say).

·        The building contains some “hidden” passages.

·        There was a tragic death when its spectacularly huge chandelier fell from the ceiling.

What we have here is a recipe for a story.  I mean, LeReau’s story practically wrote itself.  Honestly, we could have thrown all of these elements into a blender and poured out a story.  Yes, but LeReau is the one who DID it.  And while critics sometimes bash his writing, he does something with the Phantom story that is unexpected and beautiful and really appeals to me.  More on that later.

Right now, I want to meet this man who inspired the longest-running broadway show of all time.

[Music Audio Clip: The Yellow Room]

The Mystery of the Yellow Room, BBC4 The Saturday Play (1998)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k7DfGQtFSg&t=467s 

Before there was Phantom of the Opera, there was “The Mystery of the Yellow Room.”  This is a significant story that you have probably never heard of.  We just listened to a clip of a BBC 4 dramatization of the story from 1998, but the story dates back to 1907, the year Gaston LeReau published it as his first novel.  The Mystery of the Yellow Room is significant because it is considered one of the best—“Locked Room Mysteries,”—a sub-genre that features stories in which a seemingly impossible crime is committed in a locked room with no means of escape.  In the case of the Yellow Room, a woman is attacked, and when the door is knocked down, there is no one other than the victim in there.  There are iron bars on the window, and they are undisturbed.  

Yellow Room presented a model for other crime writers, including John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie.  Carr became known as “the master of the locked room mystery,” and in 1981 his book, The Hollow Man, was voted the best locked-room mystery novel of all time by 17 authors and reviewers.  But he himself named Gaston Leroux’s The Mystery of the Yellow Room as his favorite.  Incidentally, Yellow Room was named third in that same poll. 

Anyway, crime and intrigue were right up LeReux’s alley.  So, who was this guy anyway?

Here is a little bio from The Daily Telegraph.  This is from an article by Troy Lennon entitled “Gaston Leroux was inspired to write Phantom of the Opera after Palais Garnier accident.”  Long title.  Anyway, here’s an excerpt:

Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was born on May 6, 1868. His parents were travelling in a coach from Le Mans to Normandy when they had to stop so his mother could be taken to a nearby house to deliver the baby.

His father was a wealthy shipbuilder and Leroux lived a comfortable childhood, with a love of sailing, fishing and swimming. Straight out of school he went to work as a clerk in a law office, but spent his spare time writing stories and poetry. He was then sent to university to study law, winning awards and prizes and giving every indication that he was headed for a glittering law career.

But when his father died in 1889, leaving him a million francs, Leroux sank into a life of self-indulgence, gambling, going to the theatre and partying so hard he ended up broke after six months.

Faced with the need to work and frustrated by the legal system, Leroux pursued writing, taking jobs as a theatre critic and court reporter. By 1890 he had become a full-time journalist, impressing his editors by using forged credentials to score an interview with a high-profile prisoner awaiting trial.

His expertise in law also saw him reporting on the Dreyfus Affair, when anti-semitic elements in the French army conspired to accuse Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus of espionage, seeing him drummed out of the army and sentenced to life in prison in 1894. Leroux described Dreyfus’s trial as a farce and was one of the many journalists who campaigned to free Dreyfus.

Leroux also became a foreign correspondent travelling the world, including to Africa and Antarctica. He even reported on the 1905 revolution in Russia, although at times using his flair for creative writing to embellish his copy. At the time he could be relied on to boost circulation with his colourful stories.

But Leroux tired of being at the beck and call of editors, decided to concentrate purely on his forays into fiction. He had been publishing short stories in newspapers for years, so in 1907 he published his first novel, The Mystery of the Yellow Room, Inspired partly by his own experiences as a court reporter and Arthur Conan Doyle’s “consulting detective” Sherlock Holmes, it was light on action but struck the right balance of mystery and intellect to appeal to French readers.

He followed this with many other mystery novels but, in between, he wrote other novels, including The Phantom of the Opera, the work for which he is best known.  Real-life events at the Opera fired LeReux’s imagination.

THERE had long been rumours that a ghost walked the halls of the opera house in Paris, known as the Palais Garnier. Some dismissed it as superstition, but many believe that confirmation came on May 20, 1896, when during a performance by soprano Madame Rose Caron a loud noise was heard through the auditorium, followed by a crash and a cloud of dust.

A fire in the roof of the opera house had melted through a wire holding a counterweight for the chandelier. The weight had crashed through the ceiling injuring several people and killing Madame Chomette, the concierge of a boarding house, who was watching her first opera.

Gaston Leroux, a journalist working for the newspaper Le Matin, read about the accident and used it, and the rumours of a ghost, as inspiration for a story about a disfigured man who menaces the cast and stage crew of an opera company at the Palais Garnier.  The book was published in English as The Phantom of the Opera in 1910.

After several of his works were adapted to film he realised the cinematic potential of his fiction and in 1919 formed a film company with another writer, Arthur Bernede, to make films of his own novels and plays.

In 1922 Leroux gave a copy of Phantom to the head of Universal Pictures, Carl Laemmle, while Laemmle was visiting Paris. It resulted in the 1925 Lon Chaney adaptation, which made Leroux’s name famous outside of France and helped him pay off gambling debts.

Some of his other works were also adapted to film in the US, but his detective works, despite winning fans like Agatha Christie, were not as popular in the English-speaking world.

Leroux died in Nice in 1927.  And apparently, even to that day he insisted that the Phantom was real, and that his story of the Paris Opera House was rooted in truth.

So, COULD it be true?  We learn in the book that the Phantom was not a spirit, contrary to popular belief, but a sinister, disfigured man with a mysterious and tragic backstory.  So again, could such a man exist.  Certainly.  Sinister people with tragic backstories live today.  Could one actually live at the Opera House?  Maybe not today with all of the security cameras and detection devices in place.  But at one time, could that have been true?  Could someone clever, who knew the ins and outs of that magnificent palace, orchestrate all kinds of mysterious doings without being seen?  Could he have committed murder—and gotten away with it?  Well, yes.  

OK, friends, I’m not crazy.  I don’t really think that happened.  But the question is not DID it happen, but COULD it have happened? 

Let’s step inside the story and see.

[Music – Isle of the dead].

The Angel of Music played a part in all of the tales Christine’s father told her.  He maintained that every great musician, every great artist received a visit from the Angel at least once in his life.  Sometimes the Angel leans over their cradle and that is how there are little prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than men at fifty, which, you must admit, is very wonderful.  Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and don’t learn their lessons or practice their scales.  And sometimes, he does not come at all, because the children have a bad heart or a bad conscience.

No one ever sees the Angel, but he is heard by those who are meant to hear him.  He often comes when they least expect him, when they are sad and disheartened, when their ears suddenly perceive celestial harmonies, a divine voice, which they remember all their lives.  Persons who are visited by the Angel quiver with a thrill unknown to the rest of mankind.  And they can’t touch an instrument, or open their mouths to sing, without producing sounds that put all other human sounds to shame.  Then people who do not know that the Angel has visited those persons say that they have genius.

Little Christine asked her father if he had heard the Angel of Music.  But he shook his head sadly; and then his eyes lit up as he said: “You will hear him one day, my child!  When I am in Heaven, I will send him to you.

Her father was beginning to cough at that time.

This passage is about 35 pages or so into the Phantom of the Opera, and it’s an important passage because it introduces us to the Angel of Music, an imaginary entity that figures into the manipulative schemes of the Phantom. But this passage also explains Christine Daae’s vulnerability.  Why is she so easily taken in by the Phantom?  Because she is mourning the loss of her father.  She is alone in the world, and music is her connection to him. 

Enter the Phantom.  When she encounters him, he is invisible to her.  She can only hear his voice.  Now as the story goes along we learn that he is a skilled engineer, but also a musical genius.  When he sings to her, she is mesmerized.  When he begins mentoring her and teaching her—still unseen—he becomes something of a father figure, and because he is so mysterious and ethereal, she comes to believe that he is her Angel of Music.  And, being the manipulator that he is, he does nothing to disabuse her of this idea.

So here we have our two principle characters:  Christine Daae, a young ingenue who is a minor singer at the beginning of our story.  Unbeknownst to her friends and colleagues, she’s been taking lessons from a mysterious stranger, her “Angel of Music.”  Under his tutelage, she has realized her full talent and is ready to step in when Carlotta, the lead Soprano at the company, becomes ill.  She’s a huge hit, and now the world knows what only her Angel of Music had known before—that she has the makings of a star.

And then we have the Phantom.  The Phantom is so called because after a series of unexplained events at the Opera House the performers start to believe there is a ghost haunting the place.  A shadowy figure that smells and looks like death has also been seen by at least one person, and a legend is built up around this figure.  The Phantom leverages this.  He communicates with the theater managers through notes laying out his demands, and he signs these notes “O.G.” for “Opera Ghost.”  What are these demands?  Payment.  He wants I think it was 20,000 francs per month.  Also, he wants Box 5 reserved for him.  The managers are not to sell the seats in that box.  He also wants Christine given roles that will make her—not Carlotta—the leading lady at the Opera.  When his demands are not met, “accidents” soon follow.

There’s a another mysterious figure that we need to meet: known only as “The Persian,” or “The Daroga,” essentially a Persian police chief.  The Persian is a man from the Phantom’s past before he came to the Opera.  The Persian frequents the Opera, keeping his eye out for the Phantom because he knows how dangerous he is. The Persian knows the Phantom as Erik, an ingenious outcast who was nearly executed.  He is also something of a friend to Erik, for it was he who saved him.  Here’s the Phantom’s backstory from the Epilogue of Lereaux’s book:

Eric was born in a small town not far from Rouin.  He was the son of a master-mason, but he ran away at an early age from his father's house where his ugliness was a subject of horror to his parents. For a time he frequented the fairs where a showman exhibited him as the living corpse.  He seems to have crossed the whole of Europe from fair to fair, and to have completed his strange education as an artist and magician at the very fountain head of art and magic among the gypsies. 

A period of eric's life remained quite obscure.   He was seen at fairs in Russia, where he displayed himself in all his hideous glory and he already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; he practiced ventriloquism and gave performances so extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about it during the whole length of their journey.  In this way his reputation penetrated the walls of the palace at Mazenderan in Iran where the little Sultana, the favorite of the Shah was boring herself to death.

A dealer in furs returning to Samarkand told of the marvels which he had seen performed in Erik’s tent.  The trader was summoned to the palace and the daroga of Mezenderan and was told to question him. Next the daroga was instructed to go and find Eric.  He brought him to Persia where for some months eric's will was law. He was guilty of not a few horrors for he seemed not to know the difference between good and evil.  He took part calmly in a number of political assassinations.  He turned his diabolical inventive powers against the emir of Afghanistan who was at war with the Persian Empire.  

The Shah took a liking to him. Eric had very original ideas on the subject of architecture and thought out the palace much as a conjurer contrives a trick casket.   The Shah ordered him to construct in edifice of this kind. Eric did so and the building appears to have been so ingenious that His Majesty was able to move about in it unseen and to disappear without a possibility of the tricks being discovered.  When the Shah found himself the possessor of this gem He ordered Erik’s yellow eyes to be put out-- but he reflected that even when blind Eric would still be able to build so remarkable a house for another sovereign and so as long as Eric was alive someone would know the secret of the wonderful palace.

Eric's death was decided upon together with that of all the laborers who had worked under his orders.  The execution of this abominable decree devolved upon the daroga of Mazenderan.  Eric had shown him some slight services and procured him many a hearty laugh, so he saved Eric by providing him with the means of escape.  In doing so he nearly paid with his own life.

Fortunately for the daroga, however,  a corpse half eaten by birds of prey was found on the shore at the Caspian Sea and was taken for Eric’s body. Because the daroga’s friends had dressed the remains in clothing that belong to Eric, the daroga was left with the loss of the imperial favor.  His property was confiscated and he was banished as a member of the royal house.   He did, however, continue to receive a monthly pension of a few hundred francs from the Persian treasury, and on this he came to live in Paris.

As for Eric, he went to Asia minor and thence to Constantinople, where he entered the sultan's employment. He was able to render services to a monarch who was haunted by perpetual terrors.  It was Eric who constructed all the famous trapdoors in secret chambers and mysterious strong boxes that were found at Yildiz Kiosk after the last Turkish revolution.  He also invented an automaton dressed like the Sultan and resembling the Sultan in all respects, which made people believe that the Commander of the Faithful was awake at one place, when, in reality, he was asleep elsewhere. 

Of course he had to leave the Sultan’s service for the same reasons that made him fly from Persia: he knew too much.  Then, tired of his adventurous, formidable, and monstrous life, he longed to be like everybody else.  He became a contractor like any ordinary contractor building ordinary houses with ordinary bricks.  He tendered for part of the foundations in the opera.  His estimate was accepted, and when he found himself in the Cellars of the enormous playhouse, his artistic fantastic, and wizardly nature resumed the upper hand.  Besides, was he not as ever ugly as ever?   

He dreamed of creating for his own use a dwelling unknown to the rest of the world where he could hide from men's eyes.  The reader knows and guesses the rest. This is the story of poor unhappy Eric.   Shall we pity him?  Shall we curse him?   He asked only to be someone like everybody else but he was too ugly.  He had to hide his genius—or use it to play tricks with when, if he had had an ordinary face he would have been able to be one of the most distinguished of mankind.  He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world, but in the end he had to content himself with his subterranean cellar. So yes, we must needs pity the opera ghost.

This passage tells us so much.  Erik, the Phantom, was rejected by his parents.  They considered him a “horror.”  On this same theme, in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, the Phantom discloses that the world had never shown him any compassion, that he has been met with nothing but hate his whole life.  Naturally that is going to warp the mind of a person.  In the musical he talks about the “wickedness of his abhorrent face.”  

We also see the development of his genius.  He learned from his only available teachers—the gypsies.  He learned trickery.  He not only could build clever passages and trapdoors to enable people to appear and disappear, but he was a ventriloquist as well.  He could throw his voice to seem as though he was in one place when in reality he was somewhere else.  This was useful when he was taking on the persona of Christine’s Angel of Music.  We also learn something else:  That he wanted desperately to be like everyone else.  I love that last segment that I read:  “If he had had an ordinary face he would have been able to be on of the most distinguished of mankind.  He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world…”

The Phantom is a serial killer and a torturer.  Can we, as readers, have pity on him?  We can.  And now we come to the reason I love this story so much:  Phantom of the Opera has been described as a romance, as a mystery, as a horror story, and maybe it is all those things.  But more than all that it is a story of redemption.  And that, to me, is the very best kind of story that there is.

In a moment we’re going to get to the actual story, of Phantom of the Opera—and fair warning, there WILL be spoilers left and right along the way.  But before we do that, why don’t we take a little intermission.  I have a sweet little song from our friends Ray Noble and Al Bowly.  They make frequent appearances on this show.  Here they are with a song called, “The Lights of Paris” from 1932.

[Lights of Paris].

And now for the story of the Phantom of the Opera, as told in Wikipedia:

In the 1880s, in Paris, the Palais Garnier Opera House is believed to be haunted by an entity known as the Phantom of the Opera, or simply the Opera Ghost. A stagehand named Joseph Buquet is found hanged, the noose around his neck missing.

At a gala performance for the retirement of the opera house's two managers, a young, little-known Swedish soprano, Christine Daaé, is called upon to sing in place of the Opera's leading soprano, Carlotta, who is ill, and Christine’s performance is an astonishing success. The Veecomt Raoul de Shanie, who was present at the performance, recognizes her as his childhood playmate and recalls his love for her. He attempts to visit her backstage, where he hears a man complimenting her from inside her dressing room. He investigates the room once Christine leaves, only to find it empty.

Christine later meets with Raoul, who confronts her about the voice he heard in her room. Christine tells him she has been tutored by the Angel of Music, whom her father used to tell them about. When Raoul suggests that she might be the victim of a prank, she storms off. Christine visits her father's grave one night, where a mysterious figure appears and plays the violin for her. Raoul attempts to confront it but is attacked and knocked out in the process.

Back at the Palais Garnier, the new managers receive a letter from the Phantom demanding that they allow Christine to perform the lead role of Marguerite in Faust, and that Box 5 be left empty for his use, lest they perform in a house with a curse on it. The managers assume his demands are a prank and ignore them, resulting in disastrous consequences, as Carlotta ends up croaking like a toad—(SIDEBAR. This is a mystery in the story that is not explained until that passage I read from the epilogue.  We can explain the croaking as the product of Erik’s ventriloquism) in addition to Carlotta’s croaking when she sings, the chandelier suddenly drops into the audience, killing a spectator. The Phantom, in the meantime, abducts Christine from her dressing room, and he reveals himself as Erik, a man who wears a mask to cover his face.

Erik intends to hold her prisoner in his lair with him for a few days. Still, she causes him to change his plans when she unmasks him and, to the horror of both, beholds his noseless, sunken-eyed face, which resembles a skull dried up by the centuries. Fearing that she will leave him, he decides to hold her permanently, but when Christine requests release after two weeks, he agrees on the condition that she wear his ring and be faithful to him.

On the roof of the Opera House, Christine tells Raoul about her abduction and makes Raoul promise to take her away to a place where Erik can never find her, even if she resists. Raoul tells Christine he will act on his promise the next day, to which she agrees. However, Christine sympathizes with Erik and decides to sing for him one last time as a means of saying goodbye. Unbeknownst to Christine and Raoul, Erik has been watching them and overheard their whole conversation.

Sidebar:  You know, there’s this really poignant moment in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical when Erik says of Roule that “He was bound to love you, when he heard you sing.”  That was one of those moments that just brought me to tears.  Because here it was Erik who gave Christine the ability to captivate an audience with her music, but in teaching her, he lost her.  He wanted her to sing only for him, but she gave her music to someone else.  Heartbreaking!!!

The following night, the enraged and jealous Erik abducts Christine during a production of Faust and tries to force her to marry him. Raoul is led by "The Persian" into Erik's secret lair deep in the bowels of the Opera House. Still, they end up trapped in a mirrored room by Erik, who threatens that unless Christine agrees to marry him, he will kill them and everyone in the Opera House by using explosives.

Christine agrees to marry Erik. Erik initially tries to drown Raoul and the Persian, using the water which would have been used to douse the explosives. Still, Christine begs and offers to be his "living bride," promising him not to kill herself after becoming his bride, as she had just attempted suicide. Erik eventually releases Raoul and the Persian from his torture chamber.

In all the confusion, the Persian loses consciousness, and awakens some time later in a bed.  He was visited by none other than Erik.  Erik tells the Persian that he is going to die of love.

Back to the original text:

“I am dying of love, Daroga,” Erik explained.  “That is how it is.  I loved her so!  And I love her still.  I am dying of love for her.  If you knew how beautiful she was—when she let me kiss her—alive—it was the first time I ever kissed a woman.  Yes, alive.  I kissed her alive.  And she looked as beautiful as if she had been dead.”  (Sidebar:  A little creepy).

The Persian shook Erik by the arm.  “Will you tell me if she is alive or dead?”

“I tell you that I am going to die.  Yes, I kissed her alive.”

“And now she’s dead?”

“I tell you I kissed her just like that, on her forehead…and she didn’t draw back her forehead from my lips!  As to her being dead, I don’t think so, but it has nothing to do with me.  No, no, she is not dead!  And no one shall touch a hair of her head…”

Erik rose solemnly.  Then he continued, but, as he spoke, he was overcome by emotion and began to tremble like a leaf.  “Yes, she was waiting for me…waiting for me erect and alive, a real, living bride.  And when I came forward, more timid than a little child, she didn’t run away.  No, she sayed.  She waited for me.  I even believe—Daroga—that she put out her forehead a little.  Oh, not much, just a little.  Like a living bride.  And I kissed her.  And she didn’t die!  Oh, how good it is daroga, to kiss somebody on the forehead.  My mother, my poor unhappy mother would never let me kiss her.  She used to run away and throw me my mask.  Ah, you can understand, my happiness was so great, I cried.  And I fell at her feet, crying.  And I kissed her little feet crying.  You’re crying too, daroga, and she cried also, the angel cried.”

Erik sets Christine free, but asks her to promise that she will visit him on his death day and return the gold ring he gave her. He also makes the Persian promise that afterward, he will go to the newspaper and report his death.

Indeed, sometime later, Christine returns to Erik's lair, and by his request, buries him someplace where he will never be found, and returns the gold ring. Afterward, a local newspaper runs the simple note: "Erik is dead." Christine and Raoul elope together, never to return.

At one point Erik discloses that he has turned a new leaf, that he doesn’t like to think about his murderous past.  That Erik metaphorically died before his physical death.  He set Christine free, but not before her compassion for Erik set him free.

What a fabulous story!  Can you blame me for loving this?

[1943 Movie Trailer]

That was a trailer for the 1943 film adaptation of Phantom of the Opera, which starred Claude Rains as the Phantom and Susanna Foster as Christine.  

There have been numerous—and I do mean numerous—adaptations of Phantom on stage, screen, and even radio.  In preparation for tonight’s show I watched two notable films—the 1925 silent film and this 1943 show.  I hated both of them.  The Phantom is not redeemed in either version; he is killed as a villain.  That simply doesn’t work.  In the 1943 version the Phantom isn’t born disfigured—he is made so when someone throws acid on his face.  What???  No tragic backstory?  It’s just goofy.

Here’s the ending of a Lux radio version of the 1943 film.

[Lux Clip].

No, that’s just simply awful. Christine’s compassion is an after thought, rather than a pivotal element in the story.  Oh, I just can’t stand it.

So, what IS a good adaptation?

[Lloyd Webber clip]

Yeah.  That one.  The Andrew Lloyd Weber version.  Listen, no one is more surprised than me.  I saw Cats years ago at Starlight Theater here in Kansas City and I vowed never to give musical theater another chance after that.  I’ve never been an Andrew Lloyd Weber fan.  But as I explained at the beginning of this show, I got roped into watching the 25th Anniversary Phantom from Royal Albert Hall, and well, now I have a whole episode of Circa Sunday Night devoted to it.  

The story is fairly faithful to LeReux’s book, with a few important exceptions.  There is no Persian character in Lloyd Webber’s version, nor is there a torture chamber as there is in the book.  But what is retains the redemptive ending, which is most important to me.  In the final scene the Phantom is ready to kill Roule if Christine won’t marry him.  Christine agrees, in order to save Roule, but she also has this beautiful line where she calls the Phantom a “pitiful creature of darkness,” and is saddened by the terrible life he has known that would twist his soul in such a tragic way.  She kisses him—even holds his grotesque face in her hands—and he is so moved by her love and compassion that he lets both she and Roule go, telling her for the first time that he loves her.  This is the first time he has ever loved anyone.  He then disappears through one of his tricky trap doors.

Oh my gosh, how fantastic that is.

And then, of course, the music is really beautiful.  The song, All I ask of You actually reminds me of the old Oscar and Hammerstein-caliber songs—which is to say way up there on the quality scale.  All the music is really lovely.  It’s hard to pick a favorite song.  

It’s time for me to start wrapping up this show, but as I do, I’m thinking of other things I could say about this story.  Critics don’t necessarily love LeReaux’ book.  I even watched an interview with Andrew Lloyd Weber in which he talked about the book as being “all over the place,” and not well written.  Is it Shakespeare?  No, it is not.  But remember what I said about how, with all of the elements of the Opera in place, the story wrote itself?  Well, that is only partially true.  The story was much more likely to end as those early film versions ended—with the Phantom being captured or killed without any kind of transformation taking place.  It was LeReaux who made that choice to save him.  And THAT is why I love it so.

Well, that concludes our in-depth look at LeReaux’s Phantom.  Thanks so much for tuning in tonight.  If you liked this show, will you please give it a five-star review and share it with someone who might like it, too?  I would be honored.

Tomorrow is Monday again, but chin-up, it’s Christmas time!  And remember that Friday will be here before we know it.  Have a great week, and I’ll see you soon!