“The Phantom of the Opera”, by Gaston Leroux

 

264 pages, Barnes & Noble Classics, ISBN-13: 978-0880299053

There must be, oh, let’s say…10,000 different versions of Gaston Leroux’s Le Fantôme de l’Opéra…er, let’s make that The Phantom of the Opera…in print, so as to which particular volume I select to review is more-or-less irrelevant; unless they have bastardized the story, they should all be pretty much the same, content-wise. So I have chosen the first one I got, off of the Barnes & Noble remnants table sometime during the 80s (my parents bought me another version one year for Christmas, bearing the Andrew Lloyd Webber imprint, but I bought this version first). I first got into PTO when Andrew Lloyd Webber’s – and Charles Hart’s and Richard Stilgoe’s, too – musical came out in 1986…actually, that’s not quite right, as I first heard of this character from the 1962 Hammer Horror version of the story, featuring Herbert Lom and Heather Sears, that I saw repeatedly on Detroit’s WMYD Channel 20 growing up. But it was in ’86 that I really became enraptured, and so after memorizing (practically) the Webber musical, I thought I’d give the book a whirl.

Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera is almost universally acclaimed as a classic of its kind, a gothic horror story rivaling Dracula and Frankenstein in its breadth and realization as a kind of perfect storm of gothic nightmares: the ancient, labyrinthine Théâtre National de l’Opéra in Paris (now called the Palais Garnier); the host of colorful characters that make this beautiful but mysterious setting the hub of their lives; the love triangle in which one of the lovers is not merely an outcast but a veritable monster; the echoes of the Persephone myth, with our eponymous Phantom filling in for Hades...what more could a gothic aficionado want? In short, there is no denying the book’s far-reaching influence, and Leroux absolutely deserves a great deal of credit for conjuring up an incredible plot.

The conceit at the center of the book – that the narrator is reconstructing these events from diaries, reports, journals, etc. – was, I thought, rather interesting, even after I had encountered the like in both Dracula and Frankenstein (I guess reading other people’s mail was some sorta Gothic thing?). The characters, meanwhile, are…problematic. The hero and heroine are both such ninnies that I really couldn’t root for either of them: Christine is meant to be angelic, but the way she leads the Phantom on was quite contemptible; oh, I know that she does it to save her life, of course, but it still seemed heartless and cruel. Raoul, meanwhile, often described as a lad or boy or child, was hard to like also: his mercurial shifts from belief in Christine’s innocence to accusing her of every possible betrayal were exhausting to read…and I have a hard time dealing with a hero who, within the same scene, bursts into a mad laughter only to follow it by bursting into tears. Not that he’s the only one who bursts into laughter or tears at every turn…ALL of the characters do it from time-to-time, as the Victorians really did use to LOL, evidently. I was really hoping someone would just react by nodding occasionally but, alas, every scene involved extremes of some sort.

The second half of the book is, I think, better than the first, in that it is when the story begins fleshing out (so to speak) the character of the Phantom and when the Persian’s narrative takes over. We find out who and what he is and understand how his “horrible, unparalleled and repulsive ugliness put him without the pale of humanity”. It’s easy to sympathize with the ghost, but it’s hard to match the Erik of the story with the romanticized phantom of the stage production (as much of a fan as I still am). That Erik wants to be loved for himself makes him human, but most of his actions are those of a monster. It’s a heartbreaking contradiction, especially when contrasted with the vapid Christine and Raoul (really, babe, what did you see in that vapid pretty-boy? His looks? His money? His title? Jeez). It is also in this second half that this becomes a fantastical story with many “cliff-hanging” moments throughout; I can visualize it as serialized in Le Gaulois from September 23^rd, 1909, to January 8^th, 1910, before being published in book form in late March 1910 by Pierre Lafitte. And the epilogue brings a satisfying conclusion to the story, as it is here that many loose ends are tied up and things about Erik are explained: where he came from; where and how he acquired his many unusual and extraordinary talents; his connection to the Persian; how he came to live in the Opera; on what grounds he blackmailed the managers of the Opera; how he “invisibly” moved and spoke all over the Opera (I, for one, like my mysteries explained at the end).

This is not high-quality literature by any means; in fact, I suspect that if not for the scores of adaptations – and, of course, Webber’s popular musical – Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera would have been forgotten by now. However, it is an entertaining story and one that I will probably read again…while the musical will stay with me always.