Media Necromancy: Strange Happenings Under the Opera House
Hello Haunted Hearts Society Members
Welcome back to another intsallment of the strange, obscure and bygone.
Tonight’s selection might only qualify as two of those descriptions, as The Phantom of the Opera is certainly a recognized and popular story. Known mostly to modern audiences from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical, Phantom originates with a novel published in 1910 by Gaston Leroux. The first film adaption was a 1916 German film which is so lost the only traces of its existence are advertisements and a written summary. In 1925 Universal released their version starring Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin and Norman Kerry, which has since gone on to become a classic of gothic film.
Universal’s film follows the novel pretty closely, and certainly more closely than the famous musical – Webber’s iteration focuses more on the romance, removes most of the events leading to the ending, as well as the investigative aspects through the novel’s narrator trying to uncover the truth of the strange events, and the Persian who has followed the Phantom (whose name we learn to be Erik) in order to apprehend him for crimes.
That being said, the two mentioned adaptations pretty much tell the same story, so we are going to focus instead on the elements that may be unfamiliar to fans of the musical, and the descriptions from the novel and how the film brought them to the screen.
"But imagine, if you can, Red Death's mask suddenly coming to life in order to express, with the four black holes of its eyes, its nose, and its mouth, the extreme anger, the mighty fury of a demon; and not a ray of light from the sockets, for, as I learned later, you can not see his blazing eyes except in the dark."
Erik’s grotesque appearance goes well beyond what a half-mask can cover; he’s consistently described in macabre terms, compared to corpses and skeletons. His unreal and seemingly inhuman face contributes to his legend, and the characters describe sightings of him in increasingly supernatural ways. Erik embraces this, besides calling himself the “Opera Ghost”, and “Phantom”, he’s an apparition that appears and disappears in the opera house, speaks to people from places they can’t see and seems omnipresent due to his astute ability to use slight of hand tricks and navigate the secret passages of the building.
Lon Chaney’s make up captures this wonderfully, transforming him into a skull-like monster. Universal also recreated the Phantom’s costume at the masquerade as described in the novel, which is also recognizable as a reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Masque of the Red Death.”
"It was a man dressed all in scarlet, with a huge hat and feathers on the top of a wonderful death's head. From his shoulders hung an immense red-velvet cloak, which trailed along the floor like a king's train; and on this cloak was embroidered, in gold letters, which every one read and repeated aloud, "Don't touch me! I am Red Death stalking abroad!""
(Note the colour in the film!)
Erik is a genius, not just of blackmail and trickery, but of music. Though the musical shows him presenting his completed score Don Juan Triumphant at the masquerade to be performed, in the novel and film he does no such thing. The opera performed in both is instead Faust, with the conflict with Carlotta stemming from Erik’s desire to have Christine replace her in the role of Marguerite.
The Paris Opera house in the novel is as strange and unbelievable as the Phantom, and hides other secrets. It rises up and up into attics inhabited by unseen and forgotten people, and the cellars descend deep into the earth and are full of multiple entities that startle and terrify the opera workers. One would think they are also employees of the opera house, but have apparently transformed into something that the “above-ground” staff no longer recognize.
When Christine returns from Erik’s home the first time, she describes to Raoul some of the things she witnessed in the cellars, such as demons working the opera house’s furnaces – a sight that Raoul also sees in his later pursuit of Christine and the Phantom.
"There are demons down there, quite black, standing in front of boilers, and they wield shovels and pitchforks and poke up fires and stir up flames and, if you come too near them, they frighten you by suddenly opening the red mouths of their furnaces... Well, while Cesar was quietly carrying me on his back, I saw those black demons in the distance, looking quite small, in front of the red fires of their furnaces: they came into sight, disappeared and came into sight again, as we went on our winding way."
As in the musical, Erik abducts Christine in the middle of a performance, and Raoul enters the cellars to find her. Unlike musical however, which greatly expands on the role Madame Giry played, Raoul is approached by the Persian, who offers his aid. Universal replaces the Persian with a man named Ledoux who claims to be a member of the Secret Police. He appears every so often throughout the movie, and we had also learned that Erik is an escapee from Devil’s Island, a penal colony which really existed.
Raoul and the Persian have a couple strange encounters in the cellars, and the Persian is interestingly familiar with all the workings and characters of the opera house.
"A shade, this time carrying no light, just a shade in the shade, passed. It passed close to them, near enough to touch them.
They felt the warmth of its cloak upon them. For they could distinguish the shade sufficiently to see that it wore a cloak which shrouded it from head to foot. On its head it had a soft felt hat...
It moved away, drawing its feet against the walls and sometimes giving a kick into a corner.
"Whew!" said the Persian. "We've had a narrow escape; that shade knows me and has twice taken me to the managers' office."
"Is it some one belonging to the theatre police?" asked Raoul.
"It's some one much worse than that!" replied the Persian, without giving any further explanation."
One of this encounters is included in the Universal film, which is the appearance of a “fiery head.” In the novel this was mentioned earlier as everyone is trying to figure out who – or what – the Phantom is, and the face of fire had frightened another man. Though we learn this particular figure is hired to lure rats, Universal has him call himself a “messenger from the shadows”, perhaps to combine him with the aforementioned cloaked man who is never actually explained.
"Yes, a head of fire came toward them, at a man's height, but with no body attached to it. The face shed fire, looked in the darkness like a flame shaped as a man's face.
They continued to retreat, but the fiery face came on, came on, gaining on them. They could see its features clearly now. The eyes were round and staring, the nose a little crooked and the mouth large, with a hanging lower lip, very like the eyes, nose and lip of the moon, when the moon is quite red, bright red.
Yes, Raoul and the Persian were ready to faint, like Pampin the fireman. But the head of fire turned round in answer to their cries, and spoke to them:
"Don't move! Don't move! Whatever you do, don't come after me! I am the rat-catcher! Let me pass, with my rats!
And the head of fire disappeared, vanished in the darkness, while the passage in front of it lit up, as the result of the change which the rat-catcher had made in his dark lantern. Before, so as not to scare the rats in front of him, he had turned his dark lantern on himself, lighting up his own head; now, to hasten their flight, he lit the dark space in front of him. And he jumped along, dragging with him the waves of scratching rats, all the thousand sounds."
The novel and film also place more importance on Raoul’s brother, Count Philippe. Though the novel relays the unfortunate man’s fate in a second hand account and the event leading to his death to be assumed, the film includes a particularly creepy scene where Erik goes out to meet Philippe as he attempts to cross the underground lake, while using a breathing tube to hide himself underwater. Likely meant as another example of Erik’s ingenuity, the sequence leaves no doubt to the extent of his evil in his intentions to keep Christine imprisoned and kill anyone who interferes.
"Knowing Erik as he did, he easily reconstructed the tragedy. Thinking that his brother had run away with Christine Daae, Philippe had dashed in pursuit of him along the Brussels Road, where he knew that everything was prepared for the elopement. Failing to find the pair, he hurried back to the Opera, remembered Raoul's strange confidence about his fantastic rival and learned that the viscount had made every effort to enter the cellars of the theatre and that he had disappeared, leaving his hat in the prima donna's dressing-room beside an empty pistol-case. And the count, who no longer entertained any doubt of his brother's madness, in his turn darted into that infernal underground maze. This was enough, in the Persian's eyes, to explain the discovery of the Comte de Chagny's corpse on the shore of the lake, where the siren, Erik's siren, kept watch."
Erik lives on the lake under the opera house in a home of his own construction, which means of course this isn’t just an ordinary house. As Raoul and the Persian discover, it includes a torture chamber, which the Persian has knowledge of as he had seen it used before Erik installed it in Paris. The chamber is a room with mirrors on the walls, and in the middle is a metal tree on which hangs a noose. Erik can control the temperature, make the sounds of dangerous animals, and otherwise attempt to drive the victim inside to using the noose to end things.
"Because of the smallness of the luminous disk, it was difficult at first to make out the appearance of things: they saw a corner of a branch... and a leaf... and another leaf... and, next to it, nothing at all, nothing but the ray of light that seemed to reflect itself... Raoul passed his hand over that nothing, over that reflection.
"Hullo!" he said. "The wall is a looking-glass!"
"Yes, a looking-glass!" said the Persian, in a tone of deep emotion. And, passing the hand that held the pistol over his moist forehead, he added, "We have dropped into the torture-chamber!""
That’s not the only insidious feature of Erik’s house. Raoul and the Persian discover another chamber filled with barrels.
"Indeed, there was quite a number of them, symmetrically arranged in two rows, one on either side of us. They were small barrels and I thought that Erik must have selected them of that size to facilitate their carriage to the house on the lake.
We examined them successively, to see if one of them had not a funnel, showing that it had been tapped at some time or another. But all the barrels were hermetically closed.
Then, after half lifting one to make sure it was full, we went on our knees and, with the blade of a small knife which I carried, I prepared to stave in the bung-hole.
"What's this?" cried the viscount. "This isn't water!"
The viscount put his two full hands close to my lantern ... I stooped to look ... and at once threw away the lantern with such violence that it broke and went out, leaving us in utter darkness.
What I had seen in M. de Chagny's hands ... was gun-powder!"
Meanwhile, Erik is inflicting psychological torture on Christine, presenting her with a choice between two knobs in the shape of the scorpion and a grasshopper. Choose the scorpion, and she agrees to stay with Erik, but if she chooses to leave him, Erik plans to blow the opera house and everyone in to oblivion.
"In one of the caskets, you will find a scorpion, in the other, a grasshopper, both very cleverly imitated in Japanese bronze: they will say yes or no for you. If you turn the scorpion round, that will mean to me, when I return, that you have said yes. The grasshopper will mean no.' And he laughed like a drunken demon. I did nothing but beg and entreat him to give me the key of the torture-chamber, promising to be his wife if he granted me that request... But he told me that there was no future need for that key and that he was going to throw it into the lake! And he again laughed like a drunken demon and left me. Oh, his last words were, 'The grasshopper! Be careful of the grasshopper! A grasshopper does not only turn: it hops! It hops! And it hops jolly high!'"
As can be expected from Hollywood, a villain must be a villain and it would be a shame if justice wasn’t served in the most dramatic and spectacular fashion, and the ending is a major deviation from the book. Erik is chased by an angry mob and faces his end at their hands. Christine is rescued by Raoul, and that’s the end.
The novel has a bit more of a nuanced approach to Erik’s character. Though he is definitely a bad person, it gives us at least one aspect worthy of pity: the desire to just live like anyone else, made impossible by the horrific nature of his face.
"Then, tired of his adventurous, formidable and monstrous life, he longed to be some one "like everybody else." And he became a contractor, like any ordinary contractor, building ordinary houses with ordinary bricks. He tendered for part of the foundations in the Opera. His estimate was accepted. When he found himself in the cellars of the enormous playhouse, his artistic, fantastic, wizard nature resumed the upper hand. Besides, was he not as ugly as ever? He dreamed of creating for his own use a dwelling unknown to the rest of the earth, where he could hide from men's eyes for all time."
The ending of the musical is more like the novel in this sense. Raoul and Christine are let go, and never seen again (we believe they return to Christine’s home country of Sweden), and the Phantom remains alone in the opera house to the natural end of his days.
""I went and released the young man," Erik continued, "and told him to come with me to Christine ... They kissed before me in the Louis-Philippe room... Christine had my ring... I made Christine swear to come back, one night, when I was dead, crossing the lake from the Rue-Scribe side, and bury me in the greatest secrecy with the gold ring, which she was to wear until that moment. I told her where she would find my body and what to do with it... Then Christine kissed me, for the first time, herself, here, on the forehead—don't look, daroga!—here, on the forehead... on my forehead, mine—don't look, daroga!—and they went off together... Christine had stopped crying... I alone cried... if Christine keeps her promise, she will come back soon! ..."
The Persian asked him no questions. He was quite reassured as to the fate of Raoul Chagny and Christine Daae; no one could have doubted the word of the weeping Erik that night.
The monster resumed his mask and collected his strength to leave the daroga. He told him that, when he felt his end to be very near at hand, he would send him, in gratitude for the kindness which the Persian had once shown him, that which he held dearest in the world: all Christine Daae's papers, which she had written for Raoul's benefit and left with Erik, together with a few objects belonging to her, such as a pair of gloves, a shoe-buckle and two pocket-handkerchiefs. In reply to the Persian's questions, Erik told him that the two young people, at soon as they found themselves free, had resolved to go and look for a priest in some lonely spot where they could hide their happiness and that, with this object in view, they had started from "the northern railway station of the world." Lastly, Erik relied on the Persian, as soon as he received the promised relics and papers, to inform the young couple of his death and to advertise it in the EPOQUE.
That was all. The Persian saw Erik to the door of his flat, and Darius helped him down to the street. A cab was waiting for him. Erik stepped in; and the Persian, who had gone back to the window, heard him say to the driver:
And the cab drove off into the night.
The Persian had seen the poor, unfortunate Erik for the last time. Three weeks later, the Epoque published this advertisement:
"I have prayed over his mortal remains, that God might show him mercy notwithstanding his crimes. Yes, I am sure, quite sure that I prayed beside his body, the other day, when they took it from the spot where they were burying the phonographic records. It was his skeleton. I did not recognize it by the ugliness of the head, for all men are ugly when they have been dead as long as that, but by the plain gold ring which he wore and which Christine Daae had certainly slipped on his finger, when she came to bury him in accordance with her promise.
The skeleton was lying near the little well, in the place where the Angel of Music first held Christine Daae fainting in his trembling arms, on the night when he carried her down to the cellars of the opera-house."
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