Descripción
Libro 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, 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 Daae, 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. Libro The phantom of the opera.
Jack –
The Phantom’s greatest tragedy in life is the fact that he came so close to gaining the heart of the girl he loved, a sense of acceptance he has wanted for an entire lifetime, but because of his scarred and damaged soul he did nothing but terrify her; ultimately, shattering the initial allure and glamour she felt in his presence.
In the vein of Frankenstein and Heathcliff, Erik’s shattered visage, his ruined face, permeates his soul. Society, humanity, perceives his appearance as evil and twisted; thus, he takes on these traits in a cruel mockery of what is expected of him: he becomes the very thing he is branded as. And it becomes his most powerful weapon and it also becomes his downfall. He is beyond bitter. He is beyond twisted. His heart oozes with venom for a world that has always shunned him and left him an outcast in the darkness. For me, the Phantom will always be better on the stage. The true pain of Erik’s soul pours out of the music and wrenches the hearts of the audience. The final scenes, the reality of the ending, place the story on the fringes of the modernist movement and show that romance is not always storybook despite how our hearts may yearn otherwise.