The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera
Gaston Leroux

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'Look! You want to see! See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik's face! Now you know the face of the voice!’Living secretly beneath the Paris Opera House, 'The Phantom of the Opera', Erik has haunted those who work there with his demands and shrouded the opera house in fear with the legend of his disfigured face. When Christine joins the company, a young woman with a beautiful voice, Erik is instantly smitten and secretly teaches her to become a great singer. He soon develops an obsessive love for his beautiful protégé, even though she has fallen for her childhood friend, resulting in her disappearance during a performance and sparking a tragic and terrifying chain of events.One of the most well-known and well-loved gothic horror stories, Leroux's suspenseful tale of unrequited love, passion and tragedy is both dark and moving in its portrayal of Erik, the anti-hero in his yearning for Christine.

THE

PHANTOM

OF THE

OPERA

Gaston Leroux

CONTENTS

Cover (#u4e4e15ce-5d22-5777-8332-72e30581a4d1)

Title Page (#u7be3b620-29aa-5e16-944b-3669974ef212)

Prologue (#u68f76f3e-d53a-5fb7-9b62-c356ecc2f7e8)

Chapter 1: Is It the Ghost? (#u765720b0-011f-56bc-a15e-d485360a55df)

Chapter 2: The New Margarita (#ub3ca6948-ee40-54d4-8b95-a7555d6a824b)

Chapter 3: The Mysterious Reason (#u13169c16-edbc-53e9-a980-fbf3a7bd0521)

Chapter 4: Box Five (#ud2e7cf83-c361-5153-a48f-3cc594dc55c2)

Chapter 5: The Enchanted Violin (#u1ac4ef50-ec8c-53aa-9559-f7a83ca53492)

Chapter 6: A Visit to Box Five (#u9614cc11-356d-5dc4-a83e-20f3da2aa7cb)

Chapter 7: Faust and What Followed (#u5a20dc60-c1eb-5844-888d-1bdf7a139f8a)

Chapter 8: The Mysterious Brougham (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9: At the Masked Ball (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10: Forget the Name of the Man’s Voice (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11: Above the Trap-Doors (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12: Apollo’s Lyre (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13: A Master-Stroke of the Trap-Door Lover (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14: The Singular Attitude of a Safety-Pin (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15: Christine! Christine! (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16: Mme. Giry’s Astounding Revelations as to Her Personal Relations with the Opera Ghost (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17: The Safety-Pin Again (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18: The Commissary, the Viscount and the Persian (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19: The Viscount and the Persian (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20: In the Cellars of the Opera (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21: Interesting and Instructive Vicissitudes of a Persian in the Cellars of the Opera (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22: In the Torture-Chamber (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23: The Tortures Begin (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24: “Barrels! … Barrels! … Any Barrels to Sell?” (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25: The Scorpion or the Grasshopper: Which? (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26: The End of the Ghost’s Love-Story (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27: Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases Adapted from the Collins English Dictionary (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

History of Collins (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

PROLOGUE (#u5967416b-c9f8-56a0-919b-280461cca9c6)

In Which the Author of This Singular Work Informs the Reader How He Acquired the Certainty That the Opera Ghost Really Existed

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 cloak-room attendants or the concierge. 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 between the phenomena ascribed to the “ghost” and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris upper classes; and 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, men upon whose word one could absolutely rely, who would remember as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic conditions that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daaé, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the Opera on the Rue-Scribe side. But none of those witnesses had until that day thought that there was any reason for connecting the more or less legendary figure of the Opera ghost with that terrible story.

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 in the hopeless pursuit of a vain image. At last, I received the proof that my presentiments had not deceived me, and 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 the too-sceptical Moncharmin, who, during his term at the Opera, understood nothing of the mysterious behaviour of the ghost and who was making all the fun of it that he could at the very moment when he became the first victim of the curious financial operation that went on inside the “magic envelope.”

I had just left the library in despair, when I met the delightful acting-manager of our National Academy, who stood chatting on a landing with a lively and well-groomed little old man, to whom he introduced me gaily. The acting-manager knew all about my investigations and how eagerly and unsuccessfully I had been trying to discover the whereabouts of the examining magistrate in the famous Chagny case, M. Faure. Nobody knew what had become of him, alive or dead; and here he was back from Canada, where he had spent fifteen years, and the first thing he had done, on his return to Paris, was to come to the secretarial offices at the Opera and ask for a free seat. The little old man was M. Faure himself.