Christopher Lee Reads Phantom of the Opera

  The Phantom of the Opera

Gaston Leroux

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INTRODUCTION

Gaston Leroux

Employing his extensive experiences as a criminal offence reporter and war contributor, Gaston Leroux (1868–1927) produced some of the most popular criminal offense and detective novels and plays always written by a French author.

Leroux wrote one of the most famous thrillers of all time, The Phantom of the Opera (1911), too successful in several movie adaptations. His many novels about Chéri-Bibi and Hardigras were eagerly read adventure-mysteries, but his best work features Joseph Rouletabille, a young police force officer–amateur detective.

Introduced as a precocious teenager in Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (1907; US title: The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 1908), Rouletabille nigh takes over the investigation of an apparently impossible offense from the official police. Although many elements of this locked-room mystery seem familiar to readers of The Large Bow Mystery (1892) by Israel Zangwill, some critics withal consider the Leroux volume one of the best and most important titles in the history of the genre. Among the superior features of the novel is the author's willingness to be more fair with the reader than about writers of French criminal offense novels are. Rouletabille has his Watson—the reverential Sainclair, who is exasperated by the energetic reporter's many flashes of insight (all of which he keeps to himself). The least-likely-person device employed in this novel is now a classic. The sequel, and the merely other well-known tale involving Rouletabille, is Le Parfum de la dame en noir (1907; US title: The Perfume of the Lady in Black, 1909). Less successful than the previous piece of work, it relies heavily on coincidence and sensationalism.

A dramatized version of The Mystery of the Xanthous Room, produced in 1912, was highly successful.

Films

The Mystery of the Yellow Room was filmed in France several times, mostly during the silent screen menses. Lorin Baker played Joseph Rouletabille in an American version (Realart, 1919), discovering who made an attempt on the life of a girl in a locked room. Similarly, Chéri-Bibi has twice reached the French screen, the second time portrayed by Pierre Fresnay in 1937; in the U.s. he has been played only by John Gilbert.

The Phantom of Paris. MGM, 1931. Gilbert, Leila Hyams, Lewis Rock, Jean Hersholt, C. Aubrey Smith. Directed past John S. Robertson. The magician Chéri-Bibi is bedevilled of murdering his honey father; he escapes from prison house, and when the homo he suspects dies four years later, he assumes the killer's identity to bear witness his guilt.

The most extensive apply of a Leroux character on the screen, yet, has been of mad Erik haunting the Paris Opera.

The Phantom of the Opera. Universal, 1925. Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry. Directed by Rupert Julian. Lurking in the subterranean passages under the Paris Opera Firm, occasionally terrorizing and even murdering stragglers higher up, the hideously scarred and masked Erik, one time a prince of an Oriental land, falls in love with a young understudy.

The Phantom of the Opera. Universal, 1943. Nelson Boil, Claude Rains, Susanna Foster. Directed by Arthur Lubin. Disfigured by acid hurled at him during a dispute over a concerto he wrote, a musician (Rains) retreats into the depths of the Paris Opera.

The Phantom of the Opera. Hammer (British), 1962. Herbert Lom, Heather Sears, Edward de Souza, Michael Gough. Directed by Terence Fisher. In the sewers under an English opera business firm, a human in a 1-eyed mask (Lom), cared for past a dwarf, protests the theft of his lifework; he is musician Professor Petrie, in a relocated, period version of the Leroux novel.

The story was converted into a contemporary New York electronic rock palace setting in 1974 as Phantom of the Paradise, starring William Finley, directed by Brian De Palma, and released by Twentieth Century Pull a fast one on.

Another remake of The Phantom of the Opera was distributed in 2004 by Warner Bros. Pictures, starring Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, and Patrick Wilson, directed past Joel Schumacher.

Prologue

IN WHICH THE Author OF THIS SINGULAR Work INFORMS THE READER HOW HE ACQUIRED THE CERTAINTY THAT THE OPERA GHOST REALLY EXISTED

THE OPERA GHOST REALLY EXISTED. He was not, as was long believed, a brute of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yeah, he existed in flesh and claret, although he causeless the complete appearance of a existent phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.

When I began to ransack the athenaeum of the National Academy of Music I was at in one case struck past the surprising coincidences betwixt the phenomena ascribed to the "ghost" and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that e'er excited the Paris upper classes; and I presently conceived the thought that this tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question. The events do not date more than thirty years back; and it would non be hard to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men of the highest respectability, men upon whose word 1 could absolutely rely, who would call up as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic weather condition that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daae, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the Opera on the Rue-Scribe side. But none of those witnesses had until that day thought that there was any reason for connecting the more or less legendary effigy of the Opera ghost with that terrible story.

The truth was slow to enter my mind, puzzled past an research that at every moment was complicated by events which, at first sight, might be looked upon as superhuman; and more than than in one case I was within an ace of abandoning a task in which I was exhausting myself in the hopeless pursuit of a vain image. At last, I received the proof that my presentiments had not deceived me, and I was rewarded for all my efforts on the day when I acquired the certainty that the Opera ghost was more than than a mere shade.

On that twenty-four hours, I had spent long hours over THE MEMOIRS OF A MANAGER, the light and frivolous work of the too-skeptical Moncharmin, who, during his term at the Opera, understood nothing of the mysterious behavior of the ghost and who was making all the fun of information technology that he could at the very moment when he became the first victim of the curious fiscal operation that went on inside the "magic envelope."

I had just left the library in despair, when I met the delightful interim-manager of our National Academy, who stood chatting on a landing with a lively and well-clean-cut little old man, to whom he introduced me gaily. The acting-manager knew all about my investigations and how eagerly and unsuccessfully I had been trying to discover the whereabouts of the examining magistrate in the famous Chagny case, Thousand. Faure. Nobody knew what had go of him, alive or dead; and here he was dorsum from Canada, where he had spent fifteen years, and the beginning thing he had done, on his return to Paris, was to come to the secretarial offices at the Opera and ask for a gratuitous seat. The picayune one-time man was M. Faure himself.

We spent a proficient part of the evening together and he told me the whole Chagny case equally he had understood it at the time. He was jump to conclude in favor of the madness of the viscount and the accidental death of the elder brother, for lack of evidence to the opposite; but he was notwithstanding persuaded that a terrible tragedy had taken identify between the two brothers in connection with Christine Daae. He could not tell me what became of Christine or the viscount. When I mentioned the ghost, he only laughed. He, too, had been told of the curious manifestations that seemed to signal to the existence of an aberrant existence, residing in i of the most mysterious corners of the Opera, and he knew the story of the envelope; only he had never seen anything in it worthy of his attention as magistrate in charge of the Ch

agny case, and information technology was equally much every bit he had done to mind to the evidence of a witness who appeared of his own accord and declared that he had often met the ghost. This witness was none other than the human whom all Paris called the "Persian" and who was well-known to every subscriber to the Opera. The magistrate took him for a visionary.

I was immensely interested by this story of the Persian. I wanted, if there were still time, to detect this valuable and eccentric witness. My luck began to ameliorate and I discovered him in his little flat in the Rue de Rivoli, where he had lived ever since and where he died five months subsequently my visit. I was at outset inclined to be suspicious; only when the Persian had told me, with kid-like candor, all that he knew about the ghost and had handed me the proofs of the ghost's existence—including the strange correspondence of Christine Daae—to practice as I pleased with, I was no longer able to doubt. No, the ghost was non a myth!

I take, I know, been told that this correspondence may take been forged from first to concluding by a man whose imagination had certainly been fed on the most seductive tales; but fortunately I discovered some of Christine's writing outside the famous package of letters and, on a comparison between the two, all my doubts were removed. I also went into the past history of the Persian and found that he was an upright man, incapable of inventing a story that might have defeated the ends of justice.

This, moreover, was the opinion of the more serious people who, at one time or other, were mixed up in the Chagny example, who were friends of the Chagny family, to whom I showed all my documents and ready forth all my inferences. In this connection, I should like to impress a few lines which I received from General D—:

SIR:

I can not urge y'all likewise strongly to publish the results of your enquiry. I remember perfectly that, a few weeks before the disappearance of that smashing singer, Christine Daae, and the tragedy which threw the whole of the Faubourg Saint-Germain into mourning, there was a cracking deal of talk, in the foyer of the ballet, on the field of study of the "ghost;" and I believe that it only ceased to be discussed in consequence of the later affair that excited us all so profoundly. Simply, if it exist possible—as, after hearing you, I believe—to explain the tragedy through the ghost, then I beg you sir, to talk to u.s.a. most the ghost again.

Mysterious though the ghost may at first appear, he will ever be more easily explained than the dismal story in which malevolent people have tried to motion-picture show two brothers killing each other who had worshiped each other all their lives.

Believe me, etc.

Lastly, with my package of papers in paw, I again went over the ghost'south vast domain, the huge building which he had made his kingdom. All that my optics saw, all that my mind perceived, corroborated the Persian's documents precisely; and a wonderful discovery crowned my labors in a very definite fashion. It volition be remembered that, later on, when excavation in the substructure of the Opera, before burial the phonographic records of the creative person's voice, the workmen laid bare a corpse. Well, I was at in one case able to prove that this corpse was that of the Opera ghost. I made the interim-managing director put this proof to the test with his own hand; and it is at present a matter of supreme indifference to me if the papers pretend that the body was that of a victim of the District.

The wretches who were massacred, under the Commune, in the cellars of the Opera, were not buried on this side; I volition tell where their skeletons can be plant in a spot non very far from that immense crypt which was stocked during the siege with all sorts of provisions. I came upon this track just when I was looking for the remains of the Opera ghost, which I should never have discovered just for the unheard-of risk described higher up.

Merely nosotros will return to the corpse and what ought to be done with it. For the nowadays, I must conclude this very necessary introduction past thanking Thou. Mifroid (who was the commissary of constabulary called in for the first investigations after the disappearance of Christine Daae), M. Remy, the late secretary, M. Mercier, the late acting-director, M. Gabriel, the late chorus-master, and more peculiarly Mme. la Baronne de Castelot-Barbezac, who was once the "little Million" of the story (and who is not ashamed of it), the nearly charming star of our beauteous corps de ballet, the eldest daughter of the worthy Mme. Giry, now deceased, who had accuse of the ghost's private box. All these were of the greatest assistance to me; and, thanks to them, I shall be able to reproduce those hours of sheer love and terror, in their smallest details, before the reader'south optics.

And I should exist ungrateful indeed if I omitted, while standing on the threshold of this dreadful and veracious story, to thank the nowadays direction the Opera, which has and then kindly assisted me in all my inquiries, and M. Messager in particular, together with Thou. Gabion, the acting-managing director, and that most affable of men, the architect intrusted with the preservation of the edifice, who did not hesitate to lend me the works of Charles Garnier, although he was almost sure that I would never render them to him. Lastly, I must pay a public tribute to the generosity of my friend and former collaborator, Chiliad. J. Le Croze, who allowed me to dip into his splendid theatrical library and to infringe the rarest editions of books past which he set smashing shop.

GASTON LEROUX.

Chapter I

Is It the Ghost?

Information technology WAS THE EVENING on which MM. Debienne and Poligny, the managers of the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement. All of a sudden the dressing-room of La Sorelli, ane of the principal dancers, was invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage after "dancing" Polyeucte. They rushed in amid dandy confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror. Sorelli, who wished to be lone for a moment to "run through" the speech which she was to make to the resigning managers, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was little Jammes—the girl with the tip-tilted olfactory organ, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose-cherry cheeks and the lily-white cervix and shoulders—who gave the explanation in a trembling vocalization:

"It'southward the ghost!" And she locked the door.

Sorelli's dressing-room was fitted up with official, commonplace elegance. A pier-glass, a sofa, a dressing-table and a cupboard or 2 provided the necessary furniture. On the walls hung a few engravings, relics of the mother, who had known the glories of the onetime Opera in the Rue le Peletier; portraits of Vestris, Gardel, Dupont, Bigottini. But the room seemed a palace to the brats of the corps de ballet, who were lodged in mutual dressing-rooms where they spent their time singing, quarreling, smacking the dressers and hair-dressers and buying one another glasses of cassis, beer, or even rhum, until the call-male child'due south bell rang.

Sorelli was very superstitious. She shuddered when she heard little Jammes speak of the ghost, called her a "silly little fool" and so, equally she was the first to believe in ghosts in general, and the Opera ghost in particular, at in one case asked for details:

"Have y'all seen him?"

"As plainly equally I see you at present!" said little Jammes, whose legs were giving way beneath her, and she dropped with a moan into a chair.

Thereupon little Giry—the daughter with eyes black every bit sloes, hair black as ink, a swarthy complexion and a poor niggling skin stretched over poor little bones—little Giry added:

"If that's the ghost, he's very ugly!"

"Oh, yes!" cried the chorus of ballet-girls.

And they all began to talk together. The ghost had appeared to them in the shape of a admirer in dress-clothes, who had of a sudden stood before them in the passage, without their knowing where he came from. He seemed to have come straight through the wall.

"Pooh!" said 1 of them, who had more or less kept her head. "You see the ghost everywhere!"

And it was true. For several months, there had been naught discussed at the Opera but this ghost in clothes-clothes who stalked about the building, from top to lesser, like a shadow, who spoke to nobody, to whom nobody dared speak and who vanished equally before long every bit he was seen, no one knowing how or where. As became a existent ghost, he made no racket in walking. People began by laughing and

making fun of this specter dressed like a human being of style or an undertaker; but the ghost legend before long swelled to enormous proportions among the corps de ballet. All the girls pretended to have met this supernatural being more or less ofttimes. And those who laughed the loudest were not the most at ease. When he did non show himself, he betrayed his presence or his passing by accident, comic or serious, for which the general superstition held him responsible. Had whatever ane met with a fall, or suffered a practical joke at the hands of ane of the other girls, or lost a powderpuff, it was at once the fault of the ghost, of the Opera ghost.

After all, who had seen him? You meet and then many men in clothes-dress at the Opera who are non ghosts. Simply this dress-adjust had a peculiarity of its own. It covered a skeleton. At least, so the ballet-girls said. And, of course, it had a decease'southward 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 actually 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 a second—for the ghost had fled—and to any 1 who cared to listen to him he said:

"He is extraordinarily thin and his dress-glaze hangs on a skeleton frame. His eyes are and then deep that yous tin inappreciably run into the fixed pupils. You only see two big blackness holes, as in a dead man's skull. His skin, which is stretched across his bones similar a drumhead, is not white, but a nasty yellow. His olfactory organ is and then little worth talking about that you can't see it side-confront; 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."

This chief scene-shifter was a serious, sober, steady man, very wearisome at imagining things. His words were received with interest and amazement; and soon in that location were other people to say that they likewise had met a man in dress-apparel with a death's head on his shoulders. Sensible men who had wind of the story began by maxim that Joseph Buquet had been the victim of a joke played by one of his assistants. And then, one after the other, there came a series of incidents then curious and so inexplicable that the very shrewdest people began to feel uneasy.

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