The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera



is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serialisation in Le Gaulois from September 23, 1909 to January 8, 1910. Initially, the story sold very poorly upon publication in book form and was even out of print several times during the twentieth century; it is overshadowed by the success of its various film and stage adaptations. The most notable of these were the 1925 film depiction, Ken Hill's 1976 musical at the Theatre Royal Stratford East followed ten years later by Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical, and Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher's 2004 film
The novel opens with a prologue in which Gaston Leroux claims that Erik, the "Phantom of the Opera", was a real person. We are then introduced to Christine Daaé. She and her father, a famous fiddler, traveled all over Sweden playing folk and religious music. Her father was known to be the best wedding-fiddler in the land. When Christine is six, her mother dies and her father is brought to rural France by a patron, Professor Valerius.

During Christine's childhood, which is described retrospectively in the early chapters of the book, her father tells her many stories featuring an "Angel of Music", who, like a muse, is the personification of musical inspiration. Christine meets and befriends the young Raoul, Viscount of Chagny, who also enjoys her father's many stories. One of Christine and Raoul's favourite stories is one of Little Lotte, a girl with golden hair and blue eyes who is visited by the Angel of Music and possesses a heavenly voice.