Country: France
Genre: Gothic/Romance
Pages: 342
“Know that it is a corpse who loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!...Look, I am not laughing now, crying, crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore can never leave me again!...Oh, mad Christine, who wanted to see me!”*
Not so long ago, literature didn't wear the burden of reality on its shoulders. Back when the masses were surviving before exploring the nature of their feelings, they read or went to the theater for different reasons than we do now. They wanted catharsis. Liberation from the everyday grind. Access to adventures and feelings life didn't grant them. Even if written in the twentieth century, Gaston Leroux's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA belongs to this era where everything was larger than life. It's also a work of great pertinence today, because it's a gothic novel that branches in many directions. There's paranormal, crime, romance and the good-natured pen of Gaston Leroux was prescient to pulp fiction. Did I forget something? Oh yeah, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA is awesome. It has a storyline quite more complex than the musical (and I am a fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber's extravaganza) and it stands proud as one of the great gothic novel.
Forget what you've learned about THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, this is deeper, more subtle. First, it opens with a prologue where Leroux says the phantom was a real person named Erik, which is important. Then we're introduced to Christine, a young singer who grew up very close to her father, a traveling musicians. He told her stories about "the angel of music" ** and on his deathbed, he tells her he'll send the angel of music from above to visit her. When she scores a place in the Paris Opera chorus, she starts hearing a beautiful, otherworldly voice coming from behind the walls. When Christine disappears, he childhood friend (and childhood love interest) Viscount Raoul de Chagny starts hearing rumors about a phantom that possesses the opera and forces the staff and the performers to do his bidding. The courageous young Raoul is at lost without his better half and will risk life and limb for her.
Here's a novel where the principle of contrasts is used almost as efficiently as in painting. It's not as simple as Raoul-Good/Erik-Evil, not at all. Erik's characterizes darkness, yes. But darkness is always longing for a little bit of light. That purity is Christine. Where the heart of the drama lies, is that Christine needs Erik too. He's her dark muse. While she's a great technical singer, the emotions he will pull out of her will transform her into the all-star singer she was meant to be. Raoul also needs Erik to a certain extent. He needs to prove his strength and his courage to Christine. What I thought was the secret ingredient that made the dish was egocentric nature of the characters. Nobody's really, selflessly in love here. Erik wants hope to transcend his condition, Christine wants to live up to the music and Raoul doesn't want the portrait of his childhood to break. There are good intentions, mixed with the not-so-noble human nature, which create a real human dynamic behind this crazy, action packed and larger-than-life narrative.
“Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'someone,' like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and in the end had to content himself with a cellar. Surely we must pity the Opera ghost!”
France used to rock this literature thing and it's too bad they lost their way sometime last century. The hardships THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA has went through to survive is the living proof of that. Here's a novel with amazing dialogues, multiple elements of successful contemporary commercial fiction and a deep stance on romance and it had to travel to another continent and be adapted to the stage to survive. Most people don't know this is a novel. I saw the musical on broadway and now I have read the novel. Both are excellent for very different reasons, but it's important to remember that we owe Andrew Lloyd Webber for saving this classic from oblivion. While it doesn't match France's literary merit heritage (thing that blew out of proportion over the last century anyway), THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA is a narrative jewel that measures to the grand masters of gothic fiction.
FOUR STARS
FOUR STARS
* I have read the book in french. So the quotes are from the internet. Fortunately, most of the passages I had underlined were turned into quotes anyway. Because they were that cool.
** Referring to the muse in a metaphorical manner, this is important...again.
Classic Romance