[musical_maven]

I thought this would be an interesting topic.

Do you guys think that the phantom really did exist in the 1880's??
I want to know your opinions on this.
As for me, I do believe.

I believe in the musical genius that is Erik.

I'm sorry if I scare you with my freakish Phantom induced mind,
that's just how I became when I saw the movie for the first time in 2005
with Gerard Butler (who is incredibly HOT!!!!) and Emmy Rossum.

So let me know what you think, and every little contribution counts!!!

-Musical_maven <3

[Guinevere]

Did you ever read the novel?

Gaston Leroux wrote about Erik really existing. I thought it was an interesting little part to throw into the story.

As for really existing, from a romantic viewpoint, it would seem pretty neat. From a reality viewpoint, though, I would want a little more evidence.

[musical_maven]

Yes, I did read the novel and I loved every bit of it!

[HarmonicSoul]

I don't know if a romantic can also be a realist, but I think I am one of those people.

As much as I would love to believe that Erik existed, I just can't bring myself to believe that "he" actually existed. Perhaps a homeless man was living in the catacombs (or somewhere in or near the Opera House) and was blamed for a few "accidents" (dubbed by ALW) that were actually suicide/murders or just that. Accidents.

As for the whole deformed musical genius bit, I don't believe it. And that is why there is the Leroux novel, the musical, and Fanfiction.

Edit: The movie pales in comparison to the stage play. Gerard may be goregous, but his voice really isn't suited for Phantom. IMO.

[Fantine]

Nah he did not exist. I'm sure there was a lot of creepy stuff going on in the Opera Garnier (like Ballet rats whoring themself to the gentlemen), but not an Opera Ghost. Certainly not like Erik.

[Orestes Fasting]

Oh, lollerskates.

I've heard various stories about where Leroux got the idea for Erik--an eccentric musician friend who wrote in red ink, a deformed stagehand turned recluse spawning legends of an opera ghost, etc. For all I know, some of them are true. And there's no question that Leroux did his research on the Palais Garnier and its sub-levels, and made sure that his story was physically possible. But if you seriously expect me to believe that a deformed inventor-slash-musical-genius lived in a cottage by the underground lake, chillin' with his Persian buddy and the horse he kidnapped from the stables, and stalking sopranos in his spare time... right then, you go do that.

The entire plot is such far-flung gothic melodrama that it looks farcical when viewed from the right angle, and Leroux knew that full well. The only reason the book doesn't sink under the weight of its own absurdity is because he kept up a tongue-in-cheek writing style. Which isn't to say it's not good, or that the story's not compelling, but if the book had taken itself 100% seriously it would have been insufferable. When the author's winking at you, it's easier to suspend your disbelief and just follow the story where it goes.

[musical_maven]

wow, that was a very interesting view point. I never have thought of it that way before.

[lovesinging]

[musikal_geek]

[theatre_grl]

it is very likely that there was someone Leroux based Erik on, being that Christine and Raoul were real people, and the chandelier really did fall, etc.
but was he the same as the phantom we know and love? i doubt it

[Jordan]

[musical_maven]

thank you guys for contributing to this thread! I'm glad I got to see other peoples view points.

PHANTOM ROX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


-Musical_Maven

[Vice]

Whilst I honestly don't belive, I'd love to wander around Opera Garnier! (Although I'm not quite sure if it still exists or what! XD)

[theatre_grl]

of course it does!

[Vice]

[theatre_grl]

then you have to take me with you! lol

[Futuretonywinner]

Phantom TOTALLY exsisted!!!

[Lorhen]

I do believe....

I want to believe!

[LaGataNegra]

[quote="Vice"]Whilst I honestly don't belive, I'd love to wander around Opera Garnier! quote]

Ditto! I'd love to investigate that building! I've got a 'thing' for old buildings anyway, but to visit the Opera House would be extra wonderful fun.
If memory serves, it's now part of a school. They give tours, but look down on 'Le Fantome' lovers, and won't let you in Box Five. They carry the Chaney movie and the book in their gift shop, but otherwise act like you're a moron if you get too 'fan-girly'. I think the placard for Box Five has mysteriously come up missing a few times! The Phantom forum on another site has a thread or two talking about the old Opera House.

[ConverseSneaker]

the chandilier really did fall(or maybe it was a counterweight) and killed an usher on her first day of the job. It was her only visit to the Opera house.

There really is a lake under the opera house as part of the counterweight for lowering and raising the stage.

These are the only facts I think are real. Feel free to verify!

[Phantom On A Budget]

According to The Complete Phantom of the Opera by George Perry, there was an electrical short surrounding the chandelier, which damaged the steel hawser holding one of the eight counterweights in place. As a result, the counterweight broke free and came crashing through the ceiling. It was ceiling debris that crushed the one victim (a middle aged woman - I have no records saying whether she was a patron or employee). The counterweight landed in an unoccupied section of the auditorium.

[DaddyDiesel]

I would love to go around the OPera house in paris. Underground lake. Trap doors. There is an actual torture chamber in the deep cellars of the basement. Well that was left there from the war in the late 1800's. The place is huge. I am pretty sure I read somewhere that it goes 7 storys under ground and the Square footage of each level was along the lines of 5 football fields. that is freaking huge.

[ChorusKidx3]

I read the book and I was like really worried at night when I would listen to the soundtrack. Have you ever had that feeling like after you turn off your music that the music still rings in your ears and it feels like they are singing to you still? I get that a lot. lol. I do believe though.

[Brother Marvin Hinten, S.]

Well, those of you who believe just might be vindicated in the end. Leroux was an investigative journalist who may well have drawn upon some of his real experiences hobnobbing with the glitterati of Paris and some of the stories he uncovered.

Much research has been done, and a lot has been revealed. If anyone is really interested, I can post a basic summary of what was revealed by a person in the know (she works -- worked? -- at the Opera Garnier), and also some research that confirmed its assertions. Basically, there is a true story behind it, some of which was documented at the time, but it was conflated with other (also somewhat true) stories to create a penny dreadful.

[ChorusKidx3]

The Phantom and I have the same name.

[musical_maven]

That's awesome! It's a great name.

[Fantine]

Haha, my boyfriend's name is Eric (alas, no 'k')

[ChorusKidx3]

You must have the K to be the Phantom. I give him Kudos though. =]

[Fantine]

[ChorusKidx3]

[lottielou22]

I think he might have been real...
I want to name my kid Erik.
I SO want to work @ the Opera Garnier someday!! And I'd give any phantom fans that come a special tour... but I guarantee that they WILL believe in the real phantom afterwards!! Mwahahahahahaha!!!

[Toasterphantom]

We have two Erik's in orchestra, the only two bass players. Both spelt with Ks. Regularly try to kill eachother. Pretty funny.

I believe some of the events were based on truth, but alot was creative license. He may well have spoken to the anonymous Persian and the managers, and Erik, Raoul, and Christine might have existed (though titles and names could have been changed for the purpose of identity preservation, or merely to create a better story.) The chandelier weight may have been purposely dropped for all I know, but the chandelier itself would be grander for a novel.

He could have lived in the catacombs. Abused the management. Kidnapped a young chorus girl to the depths and murdered in her name, whoever exactly he was. But I don't know for sure. And I don't pretend to know. But I like to think at least some of the story was based on truth. The tale of the man in the mask.

[lottielou22]

The year that the chandelier's counterweight fell was the only year that they didn't have a record at the Opera Garnier, or so I'm told.

[Brother Marvin Hinten, S.]

The real story is actually quite intriguing. I've now been authorized to release some of the information that was uncovered thanks to a Phan in Paris who haunted the opera library there for years searching for evidence that Erik actually existed. After all that time, she was befriended by Mme. Renata de Waele, the Opera Garnier's PR officer. (Brigitta D'Arcy, author of Le Fantome, received similar info and based the first half of her novel on it.)

De Waele took her on a tour of the cellars. The first thing that the Phan noticed was a circular, subterranean rotunda, recognizable by a stone dome, described as the acoustic center of the Opera Garner. It's a chamber that catches every sound from overhead with incomparable sonority. This rotunda was constructed almost exactly the same as the one up above, a round symmetrical construction that seemingly caused every sound to converge at its center. She described it as "a sort of skeletal framework" for its twin above. It's not hard to picture Erik listening in, is it?

They then come to this locked metallic door with a concrete seal, and de Waele lays the whole tale on her. A certain Monsieur Clark donated a bunch of phonographic records featuring popular voices of the time to the Opera. They were not to be exploited or played in any form until a certain number of years had passed. (If this sounds familiar, Leroux mentions it in the book.) Anyway, in the meantime, Clark wanted the records stored in a securely guarded vault...and it became necessary to build one in the basement because the Opera didn't have such a vault at the time.

Don't get the wrong idea. Before construction began, that door wasn't in the wall, nor did Erik ever live to use it. The people who were charged with leading the project, and some of the work force, looked for the best place to dig, one that would be well reinforced, close to the underground access way, and removed from the everyday comings and goings of workmen. And they found this wall that de Waele and the Phan were staring at today. Now here's the kicker...they were demolishing the wall to set it up as a secure vault and discovered a furnished two-room studio apartment with all the comforts of a 19th century home!

The workmen didn't immediately realize the importance of their discovery. After all, while rare, it was not uncommon during that time for workers to set up private living spaces at a construction site purely for convenience. Nothing extraordinary. But once they emptied the room, some of the workers (as they do) began to wonder how this guy ever got into the place, as there were no doors in sight.

Soon enough, picking through the wreckage of the demolished wall told them everything: there was an entrance in the wall they had demolished, but it had been bricked over on both sides.

More on this story when I get a minute!

[Brother Marvin Hinten, S.]

Okay, more of the story!

In 1907, while working on the vault further, a buried skeleton was found (I don't have to tell you who this is, ). Quite large, clearly masculine, and the skull was asymmetrical, suggesting a severe facial deformity due to a malformation of bone and cartilage. (Leroux mentions this corpse as part of the novel, too...it was suggested by many, including George Perry in The Complete POTO, that this was the body of a prisoner from the Commune days, but when the Phan said this to de Waele, she was informed that the dungeons were actually located on the other side of the building from where the corpse was found, and even if it were a prisoner, it wouldn't have been found by itself or so much later than the others.) What cemented the identification of this skeleton as Erik's was the presence of a ring, described by Leroux. made of solid gold, with the initials "C.D." on it in what de Waele described as "large, unmistakable letters". (Both the skeleton and the ring were apparently lost in one of the subsequent wars. Why the workers never reburied the skeleton elsewhere or preserved the ring remains unknown.)

As it turns out, the real story has been passed down since the 1800's as Opera Garnier lore. Only Erik's first name was known, his last name will forever remain a mystery. Perhaps he wanted to forget it (at the time, those with deformities were considered monsters and denied of rights given to others, such as title and dignity if you were a noble, which is relevant because there's more to the story based on research).

Erik's story was fairly well known at the time. He left home at the age of 8, earned his living with the circuses traveling Europe at the time, learned architecture in Persia (his alleged tribulations there as recounted by Leroux are based in fact and were apparently not unknown), and returned to Paris where he got a job building the Grand Hotel. And then Charles Garnier put the word out that he needed workmen for the new opera house.

Erik was seriously interested and managed to get hired as a stonemason doing primary work on the Opera House's foundation, and while everyone else focused on the high water table problem (necessitating the creation of the lake), he was free to build his new home as he pleased. Not a palace by the lake (that was a later exaggeration brought on by the story being passed down by word of mouth over time), but a simply furnished home away from the cold world above. He didn't have any outstanding qualities other than a great interest in music, so it was a shock and surprise when tragic events unfolded as they did.

Over time, he fell in love with a simple chorus girl, as anonymous as all the others, named Christine Daae. He was deeply smitten with her, the poor thing, but he knew that he could never show himself to her. He felt that if he did, she could never love him. If only he had something to hide his deformity, some sort of disguise, like...a mask...and so the legendary Phantom was born!

While disguised, he began to develop facets of his personality that no one had ever seen before. Remember, Erik the construction worker was just like anybody else except for his love of music. When the gifted and later much maligned Phantom appeared, no one could have ever imagined it was Erik. Only one person knew the true story, a person Leroux later dubbed "The Persian" with an invented background and history with Erik. And it was this person who observed events as they developed. No one remembers who he was, but all that is recalled is that he was Erik's friend.

With new-found confidence while disguised, Erik developed an air of mystery about himself and rumors began to spread about the Phantom's gift for seducing women. He even began to be written about in newspapers (the May 29, 1879 issue of The Parisian writes in a short article of "the Phantom of the Avenue de l'Opera" who played an ocarina). So it was no surprise when Daae, rumored to be the Phantom's chief interest, disappeared from the singers' foyer and was not heard from for two weeks, reputedly in the company of the Phantom. But after two weeks, she returned, claiming to have spurned the Phantom's love (God knows why), and the poor man never took up mask or cape again.

He was simply Erik once again, and due to the severe depression, he became suicidal. He walled up the main entrance to his apartment and allowed himself to starve to death there. Later, the character who became "The Persian" found him dead and buried him out of pity, also walling up the other entrance. Given this whole story, Leroux had the basic outline and the setting. Now it was time to fill in the gaps.

More on that in the next post!

[musical_maven]

Wow! Great job Brother Marvin! That information was most helpful.

[lesmisboy]

Christina Nilsson, Countess de Casa Miranda, (August 20, 1843 – November 20, 1921) was a Swedish operatic soprano.
She was born Kristina Jonasdotter in the village of Sjöabol, near Växjö, Småland, to the peasants Jonas Nilsson and Cajsa-Stina Månsdotter. She was discovered by a prominent civil servant when, aged fourteen, she was playing the violin at a market in Ljungby. He soon became her patron, enabling her to have vocal training.
In 1860 she gave concerts in Stockholm and Uppsala. After four years' study in Paris, she had her operatic début 1864 as Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata at the Théâtre Lyrique, Paris. After this success she sang at major opera houses in London, St. Petersburg, Vienna and New York. She sang in the Metropolitan Opera's inaugural performance on October 22, 1883 in Gounod's Faust.'
Nilsson married the French banker Auguste Rouzaud, who died in 1882. In 1887 she married Angel Ramon Maria Vallejo y Miranda, Count de Casa Miranda, who died in 1902. In correspondence, Nilsson often signed her first name as Christine, and during the last part of her life she was generally known as the Countess de Casa Miranda.
She died in Stockholm in 1921.
There are many similarities between Nilsson and the character of Christine Daaé in Gaston Leroux's novel Phantom of the Opera, and many believe Leroux based the character off of the real-life opera singer, although evidence for this is unverified.

[Brother Marvin Hinten, S.]

Thanks for introducing the next bit of info! See, as you saw in the real Phantom story, there was a Christine Daae and the Phantom did fall for her. But what's interesting about some nobody in the back row of the chorus? Leroux took Christina Nilsson's background story and stitched parts of it onto Daae for a more interesting novel.

In fact, it's kind of obvious when you look at what matches up about their background stories:

Both came from a similarly named town in Sweden (Skotelof for Christine, Skatelov for Christina -- different spellings over time may mean it was actually the same town).
Both of their fathers sang in church.
They both traveled the countryside with their fathers as children, singing for money at fairs.
They were discovered at similarly named fairs (Limby for Christine, Ljungby for Christina).
Both were trained by someone bearing the name Valerius (in the novel, Valerius discovered Christine as well).
Both people named Valerius took their charges with them to Gothenburg.
Both married into nobility and became countesses.