Riot’s Classic Literature Reviews: The Phantom of the Opera
“Down once more to the dungeon of my black despair, Down we plunge to the prison of my mind, Down that path into darkness deep as hell!” Chilling. Though I couldn’t say I am a full-fledged connoisseur of musicals and musical theater, I’ve seen The Phantom of the Opera enough times to know what a brilliant piece of work it is. After partaking in showings in New York, Los Angeles, and a double helping in Vegas (combined with countless viewings of the films) somehow years went by before I realized that the musical was initially a book. After a couple of moves and rediscovering the book among my wife’s things while packing, I finally decided to pick it up and give it a read. First published in 1908, French author Gaston Leroux spun the tale of the Opera Ghost, a mysterious figure that haunted the Paris Opera, its performers and patrons, and specifically every step and movement of a talented young singer, Christine Daae. Leroux spins a fascinating tale just as complex and thrilling as the one most people are familiar with, but maintains more gothic elements that were somewhat left behind in the musical.
Love (more like Obsession) and Jealousy: Certainly the most obvious theme of the book, Leroux spends a substantial amount of time fleshing out this theme. Specifically, he emphasizes the ways in which jealousy is so destructive to relationships and trust, not only highlighting this in the “relationship” between Christine and the Opera Ghost (who is actually named Erik, had no idea) but also in her courtship with Raoul de Chagny. We understand that Erik is a man possessed by love, so infatuated with Christine that he goes to every length just to obtain her hand in marriage. But the emotionally damaged character doesn’t approach anything in his life normally. His overt genius in everything from music to construction is his relational downfall because he doesn’t know/practice subtlety or reservations. When he dives into something, it’s decisively feet first. This presents an obvious issue with Christine who, due to a combination of childlike naïveté and appreciation/debt for his musical tutelage, is easily entrapped by his influence. Erik doesn’t want anyone or anything to come between him and his “true love,” but his jealous obsession turns Christine more into prey than anything else.
Raoul is the unexpected element of jealousy in this story. In the musical, he plays as the star-crossed lover, a friend from childhood and Christine’s first love who is desperate to have her hand and rescue her from the clutches of the Phantom. While those story telling elements remain in the book, Raoul is more of an emotional and jealous mess than anything else. Ironically, I’ve seen this style more often than not in classic literature when authors describe the men, especially as it pertains to themes of love. Once these men are entrapped by it, they often lose all sense of reason at the expense of their dignity. Raoul is especially like this, more love-sick puppy than man. He frequently loses his cool anytime Christine even remotely “favors” Erik and this is often simply moments where she is describing what it’s like to be around the other man. At the climax of the book, Raoul certainly shows moments of true bravery, but they are undercut by so many otherinstances of irrational jealousy that could have or should have easily derailed his relationship with Christine. Ironically although Christine is able to “find the man behind the mask” at the end, it’s absolutely certain that if he didn’t look the way he did (which was far more grotesque/terrifying in the book then how he was portrayed in the musical), Raoul wouldn’t have stood a chance in hell.
Gothic/Spiritual/Supernatural Influence: There is certainly one glaring difference between the book and the musical: the book is significantly darker/more ominous. Most of this difference is reflected in the Opera Ghost/Erik himself. He is described as being basically a corpse, emaciated, skeletal, and smelling like rotting flesh. His presence around the Paris Opera is mired in shadow and is often only recognizable by a pair glowing, yellow eyes when he allows someone to see him. The descriptions of him are meant to invoke terror, something that is missing from the musical production. Certainly by the end of the story there is an element of sympathy that Leroux wants us to feel for Erik. Shunned by his parents, society, and ultimately his “love,” his internal struggles are meant to be reflected on his external features. But regardless of its conclusion, Erik is in fact a monster for the majority of the tale and the labyrinth that he constructed for himself beneath and throughout the Paris Opera is meant to be terrifying. Being a master ventriloquist, throwing his voice from the walls of places performers and managers are supposed to feel safe is a chilling concept.
The mystery of the Opera isn’t confined to the Phantom though. In their journey through Erik’s labyrinth, Raoul and a character known as “The Persian” come into contact with a pair of supernatural elements, neither of which are ever given a full, logical explanation. The first, described as a flaming skull known as “The Rat Catcher,” is apparently an exterminator in service of the Opera. His presence early on in the pair’s descent into Erik’s lair is merely a fear-invoking, horror story trope, as he chases a whole stampede of rats into The Persian and Raoul. But his presence starts and ends there, a brief moment of imaginative terror as the reader envisions a massive amount of little feet and claws climbing all over the heroes. The second, another spirit-like entity referred to as “the man in the felt hat,” is so briefly and barely described it’s a wonder why he was included at all. In a small footnote from Leroux, it is hinted that the man is some sort of government agent who is affecting the image of the Phantom possibly as a means of gathering information. Leroux might have been better off offering absolutely no explanation at all. Running theories seem to be that the man is in fact Erik, playing another trick on the two men trying to rescue Christine, but that idea is contradicted by The Persian himself, someone that knows nearly everything about him.
Murder Mystery: Prior to the Phantom’s publishing, Leroux made a name for himself writing mystery fiction, adopting the same stylings of Sherlock Holmes novels. The Phantom of the Opera, when you peel back the horror elements, could easily be seen as just another murder mystery tale. The Persian, the only person who really knows and understands Erik, spends a good chunk of the book unraveling the mythos behind the Phantom, including solving an inescapable death trap (referred to as the torture chamber). Though he appears a couple of times before the climactic descent into the depths of the Opera, The Persian comes into play almost out of nowhere, with a depth of knowledge that tears through all of the mystery cultivated through the first majority of the book. The sequencing of events are completely different than what most people will be used to. In the musical, the death/hanging of Joseph Buquet kicks off the climax of the story, ultimately ending in the destruction of the Paris Opera. Surprisingly enough, Buquet’s body is found in the first chapter of the book, which serves to stoke the fears surrounding the mysterious Opera Ghost but otherwise has little to no impact on the rest of the story. Through The Persian’s systematic deconstruction of events (told from the perspective of a first person letter/journal) much of the supernatural elements surrounding the Opera Ghost are stripped away to reflect a “reason” of sorts but not entirely, leaving just enough room for doubt and frankly an appreciation of Erik’s genius.
Music: Though I was entirely out of my element and scope of knowledge on French music (as I’m sure most readers will be) it is obvious that Leroux used it as a theme throughout the book. He cleverly injected snippets of lyrics as foreshadowing elements to the mysterious events surrounding the Opera. Music of course is the element that unites the main trio of characters (Raoul, Christine, Erik) not only from the past but also the present. Adopting the moniker of “The Angel of Music” and using it to deceive Christine for a majority of the book is quite literally how Erik is even able to make himself a threat to Christine and Raoul’s relationship at all. He preys upon the knowledge of the death of Christine’s father and what the man promised her, especially being privy to their history together as musicians. Because there is no actual musical element in reading a book, its ability to sort of soften the edges of the story are laid open instead to a more haunting element. Erik is essentially a new take on a Siren, which is obviously why Leroux wrote that in as another one of the Ghost’s tricks, something that claims the life of Raoul’s brother at the climax of the story. Music’s running theme throughout is the main reason it was such a brilliant idea to adapt it into a musical, complete with a plot rewrite that is more palatable for the general public.
Wrap Up: The Phantom of the Opera is a quick, entertaining, and thrilling tale that is certainly worth a few nights of reading. It is short and easily digestible, with a writing style that flows well and only gets hung up by consistently having to sound out the French names/titles of the characters. Fans of the musical aren’t going to get anything too divergent from the book but more of an expansion, with role reversals and “new” characters that add a different element to the story. The biggest (and most important) deviation comes in the form of The Persian, a character that I would argue was worth eliminating for the sake of the musical’s version of the story. Most of who he was is adapted into Madame Giry‘s character, who ironically is pretty inconsequential to the events of the book, along with her daughter, Meg. I’d venture that the hardest part of reading through Leroux’s novel is trying to separate everything you might already know from the musicals. Sure, music is an important theme/element, but literary fiction ensures that it becomes an underlying element instead of the method that drives the story. The reader therefore becomes impressed more by the ways in which Erik is able to manipulate his surroundings and the people that reside within the walls of the Opera. It’s the rest of his genius that allows the reader to believe that he could musically hypnotize Christine into loving him or doing anything he asks. Christine’s naïveté is still something strange to contend with, but the novel version of the singer is given a lot more room to explain her compassionate spirit, something that the Phantom inevitably cannot handle emotionally. The pacing of the story can be a little tedious at times, but I’d say that was more of an impressive element than anything else on Leroux’s part. Raoul and The Persian’s time within the torture chamber for example is so arduously spelled out that it starts to peel away at the suspense of the moment. Although if given enough thought, their predicament is truly a terrifying one, caught in an inescapable wall of mirrors that is slowly cooking them to death. The book is foremost a supernatural mystery, interjected with the emotional outbursts of a romantic novel mimicking the caliber of the Bronte sister’s works. It is entertaining and suspenseful and as I stated earlier, a highlight to everything we already know about the emotionally complex story of The Phantom of the Opera.
Riot’s Rating: 9.8/10: My copy was 265 pages long and took me four nights of fairly undedicated reading to complete. I strongly recommend taking the time to read it, especially if you’re already a fan of the musical.
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