Opera Garnier sculpture Grand Staircase Grand Foyer ceiling In Phantom, Leroux also uses a falling chandelier as a major plot point, a dramatic scene (described above) of kidnapping and senseless murder. In 1896, a counterweight fell from the real chandelier, killing a woman in the audience.
The Paris Opera chandelier is also featured in Leroux’s novel. And there are actually tunnels, just as Leroux wrote. Though today it’s brightly lit, so not as eerily gloomy. The Phantom’s underground lake-lair is real, as I mentioned above. I won’t spoil the ending if you haven’t read the novel or seen the musical.īut many elements of Leroux’s novel, which is set in an opera house, come directly from the Paris Opera. A jealous Phantom is furious and begins terrorizing the opera house. He regales her with the title song Phantom of the Opera and Music of the Night.Ĭhristine’s star rises, and a handsome suitor enters the picture. He then kidnaps Christine, taking her by gondola to his watery underground lair full of secret tunnels. The phantom rigs a chandelier to fall on the audience as a distraction, killing people. The 7 ton chandelier in the Paris Opera house He becomes her “angel of music,” giving her complimentary singing lessons.
He takes up residence in the underground lake beneath the theater.Įrik becomes obsessed with a young soprano, Christine Daaé. The novel stars Erik as the phantom, a disfigured composer who wears a mask to cover his face. His fantasy novel is an ingenious blending of fact and fiction, with the Paris Opera as a star character. In any event, for purposes of this article, I want to explain how historical events at the Opera Garnier inspired Leroux’s 1910 potboiler. Yet, the practical side of me always wonders where the Phantom got a horse and does he have a humidifier. It’s escapism, as its author Gaston Leroux, a true crime writer and opera critic, no doubt intended. But I can’t resist a lush high Gothic romance, even if the titular hero is a bit murdery.
Image source: Her Majesty’s Theater Phantom of the Opera: Inspired by the Opera Garnierīy today’s politically correct standards, with its clunky plot, Phantom of the Opera may seem a bit dated or patriarchal. A key moment in the Phantom of the Opera musical.
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