The Phantom of the Opera

The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet.

Christine's mysterious 'Angel of Music' → the ghost's extortion of the managers → abduction and the torture-chamber climax beneath the Opera → Erik's release of the lovers and death; a solid gothic mystery, if uneven between investigation and melodrama, so plot scores 82.

Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade. When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences.

Erik is a magnificent tragic monster (genius, deformity, thwarted love); Christine, Raoul, and especially the Persian anchor the human frame, though the young lovers are conventional against Erik's force, so cast scores 84.

If you refuse, you will give FAUST to-night in a house with a curse upon it. Take my advice and be warned in time. O. G. "Look here, I'm getting sick of him, sick of him!" shouted Richard, bringing his fists down on his office-table.

The managerial-blackmail comedy and framing digressions slacken the middle; tension spikes hard at the masked ball, the abduction, and the underground climax, giving an irregular tempo, so pace scores 78.

The truth was slow to enter my mind, puzzled by an inquiry that at every moment was complicated by events which, at first sight, might be looked upon as superhuman; and more than once I was within an ace of abandoning a task in which I was exhausting myself.

Journalistic, exclamatory feuilleton style (Leroux was a reporter) — the mock-investigation register is atmospheric but often breathless; effective for dread, uneven as literary prose, so prose scores 80.

I was rewarded for all my efforts on the day when I acquired the certainty that the Opera ghost was more than a mere shade. On that day, I had spent long hours over THE MEMOIRS OF A MANAGER, the light and frivolous work of a man whose wit amounted to genius.

The Palais Garnier itself — Box Five, the cellars, the underground lake, trap-doors and mirror-rooms — is the novel's triumph, a fully realized gothic labyrinth, so world scores 88.

The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers.

The documentary Prologue insisting 'the Opera ghost really existed' and 'IS IT A GHOST?' is a canny pseudo-nonfiction hook that primes uncanny belief before any scene, so hook scores 86.

I soon conceived the idea that this tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question. The events do not date more than thirty years back; and it would not be difficult to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men of the highest respectability.

Fused detective-mystery framing with gothic romance and stage spectacle; the masked disfigured genius became an enduring archetype far beyond the book, so innov scores 85.

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: "Erik is dead."

Erik frees Christine and Raoul for a single act of love, then dies alone — 'Erik is dead.' — a genuinely moving redemptive close, reinforced by the epilogue's insistence on his reality, so ending scores 85.