Phantom of the Opera -- Episode 4 (part 1 of 3). The original book.

Theater History and Mysteries

It’s 1786, and a male ballet dancer (“Dahn- sir”) and ballerina both dance at the Paris opera house, and the man falls in love with the woman. But so does a solider, and in the love triangle the dahn-sir is killed. With his dying breath he asks that he be buried in the opera house to be near his love in death if not in life, and his bones are later used as props in theater productions.

Could this story be the inspiration for the Phantom of the Opera?

Or in 1873 the original opera house burned down just as the majestic new Palais Garnier is being finished, leaving a ballerina dead and her fiancé disfigured.

Could this story be the inspiration for the Phantom of the Opera?

Ironically, the Phantom of the Opera isn’t a phantom at all – it’s a real guy and not a ghost. So it might not be that surprising that number of non-ghostly mysteries surround the Phantom of the Opera. SO MANY QUESTIONS.

• What, and who, inspired the characters?
• Was there a real chandelier accident, and if so, what happened?
• The story has obviously gained traction, but when the book was published, was it a flop or a hit?
• How did Carl Lemmele, the CEO of Universal Pictures, find out about the book?
• What makes the narrative so enduring, that it’s inspired a book, a movie, and musical?
• What makes the musical so popular – maybe even more popular than any entertainment production, including any movie – and is it the same thing that makes the book work? Does the narrative of the book make the musical work, or did the musical resuscitate a poorly written book?
• Was Andrew Lloyd Webber a fan of the book or did he consider it a classic penny dreadful?
• How does the story end?
• As interpretations fly, an intrepid “independent scholar” finds a previously undiscovered ORIGINAL manuscript that shows what the author was thinking at the time the book was printed. What did that manuscript reveal?
• And where are the ghosts?

In this episode we'll discuss the author, the original books, and separate out what real and imagined incidents inspired the original book.
REFERENCES
Babilas, D. (2013). Paris Opera as an Edifice and a Literary Haunted House. In Dark Cartogrophies – Exploring Gothic Spaces (pp. 67-87). Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Biancorosso, G. (2018). The phantom of the opera and the performance of cinema. The Opera Quarterly, 34(2), 153–167. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/8/article/716827

Blake, M. F. (1995). A thousand faces: Lon Chaney’s unique artistry in motion pictures. New York: Vestal Press.

Chandler, D. (2009). “What do we mean by opera, anyway? ”: Lloyd webber’s phantom of the opera and “high-pop” theatre. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 21(2), 152–169. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-1598.2009.01186.x

Cui, A.-X., Motamed Yeganeh, N., Sviatchenko, O., Leavitt, T., McKee, T., Guthier, C., Hermiston, N., & Boyd, L. (2022). The phantoms of the opera—Stress offstage and stress onstage. Psychology of Music, 50(3), 797–813. https://doi.org/10.1177/03057356211013504

Curiosity Damsel. (2017, July 24). The opera ghost really existed.. Curiosity Damsel. https://curiositydamsel.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/the-opera-ghost-really-existed/

Frey, A. (2016, July 22). The Phantom of the Opera: Myth versus reality. CMUSE. https://www.cmuse.org/the-phantom-of-the-opera-myth-versus-reality/

Grover-Friedlander, M. (1999). “The phantom of the opera”: The lost voice

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