Christine feels sorry for Erik and wants to sing on stage for him one more time. Raoul says that he will take Christine far away, where Erik will never find her. Erik decides to force Christine to stay with him forever but allows her to leave after two weeks, on the condition that she wears his ring and promises to be faithful to him.Ĭhristine tells Raoul what has happened to her. Erik becomes enraged, shouting that Christine probably thinks his face is another mask and forcing her to touch it to prove that it is real. Christine finds herself becoming attracted to him but everything changes when she removes his mask and sees that he has a face like a rotting corpse. At first, he plans to keep her with him for a few weeks, hoping that she will fall in love with him during that time. The Phantom reveals to Christine that he was her Angel of Music. During the chaos that ensues, the Phantom abducts Christine.Ĭhristine and the Phantom, 1911 illustration by André Castaigne from the first American edition of The Phantom of the Opera. During a performance, the prima donna La Carlotta appears to croak like a toad (the sound is really coming from Erik the Phantom who considers himself to be the world's greatest ventriloquist) before a chandelier comes crashing down into the audience.
The Opera House management refuse to leave any more money for the Phantom and will no longer keep box number five free for him. Raoul, now the Viscount of Chagny, hears her sing and remembers his love for her. She sings at a gala performance and is a great success. Christine's voice improves with Erik's help. The voice really belongs to Erik, the Phantom of the Opera. The voice says that it is the angel and offers to teach her some heavenly music. She asks the voice if it is the Angel of Music. Soon after she arrives, she begins to hear a voice singing and speaking to her. On his deathbed he promises to send the Angel of Music from heaven to help her.Ĭhristine eventually finds work at the Paris Opera House. Christine's father dies while she is still a little girl.
Christine's father tells the two children stories, which they greatly enjoy, about the Angel of Music. There she meets and befriends a boy from a noble family named Raoul. She moves to rural France with her father when she is six. Christine is born in Sweden, the daughter of a talented violinist. There have been numerous adaptations of the novel to other media, among the best known of which are the 1925 silent movie starring Lon Chaney and the 1996 stage musical written by Andrew Lloyd-Webber.įront cover of a 1920 edition of the novel.Īfter an introduction in which Leroux says that the ghostly goings-on at the Paris Opera House thirty years earlier are well known, the novel moves on to the life story of Christine Daae. The novel deals primarily with the Phantom's relationship with Christine Daae, a beautiful and gifted young opera singer with whom he falls in love.
He threatens that there will be severe consequences if his conditions are not met. For many years, the Phantom leaves notes to extort money from the Opera House managers and makes them agree to keep box number five free for him at all times. He is believed by most people who work in the Opera House to be a ghost that haunts the theater. He lives beneath the Paris Opera House and moves freely about the building. He is prepared to use extortion, intimidation and even murder in order to get what he wants. Erik is extremely talented but does not appear to know the difference between right and wrong. The title character is a man who calls himself Erik, is hideously deformed and hides his ugliness behind a mask.
The Phantom of the Opera (French: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) is a novel by the French author Gaston Leroux that was first published as a newspaper serial between Septemand January 8, 1910.
A wax model of Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera.