In response to a refused surrender of Box Five to the Opera Ghost, Carlotta loses her voice and the chandelier overhead plummets into the audience.Īfter the chandelier crashes, Erik kidnaps Christine to his home in the cellars and reveals his true identity. A time after the gala, the Paris Opera performs Faust, with the prima donna Carlotta playing the lead. Her old childhood friend Raoul hears her and remembers his love for her. With the help of the Voice, Christine triumphs at the gala on the night of the old managers' retirement. Unknown to Christine, at least at first, he falls in love with her. He is the Opera ghost ('Fantôme' in French can be translated as both 'ghost' and 'phantom') who has been extorting money from the Opera's management for many years. The Voice agrees and offers to teach her 'a little bit of heaven's music.' The Voice, however, belongs to Erik, a disfigured genius who was one of the contractors who built the opera and who secretly built into the cellars a home for himself. She believes this must be the Angel of Music and asks him if he is. Not long after she arrives there, she begins hearing a beautiful, unearthly voice which sings to her and speaks to her. Christine now lives with Mamma Valerius, the elderly widow of her father's benefactor.Ĭhristine is eventually given a position in the chorus at the Paris Opera House (Opera Populaire). On his deathbed, Christine's father tells her that from Heaven, he will send the Angel of Music to her. 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. Christine meets and befriends the young Raoul, Viscount of Chagny, who also enjoys her father's many stories. When Christine is six, her mother dies and her father is brought to rural France by a patron, Professor Valerius.ĭuring 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. Her father was known to be the best wedding fiddler in the land. She and her father, a famous fiddler, traveled all over Sweden playing folk and religious music. We are then introduced to Christine Daaé. The novel opens with a prologue in which Gaston Leroux claims that Erik, the 'Phantom of the Opera', was a real person. 3 Insistance of the Existence of Erik by Leroux.

Original author of phantom of the opera