Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera, is a novel
that has remained relevant over a century after its release. It has been
adapted into various movies and was even turned into a musical that was
performed on Broadway. While The Phantom
of the Opera is a fictional story, Leroux integrated pieces of truth in the
novel, one example being the setting of the story. The story takes place at the
Palais Garnier which is a real opera house in Paris, France that still exists
today. In the novel, a “phantom” haunts the opera house; however, the “phantom”
is not actually a ghost but a person who is a skilled musical artist that lives
in hiding in the basement of the opera house. The part of the basement in which
the phantom lives is often referred to as his “lair”. He hides from the public
because he was born with a facial deformity, but later film adaptations created
storylines where his facial deformity was due to events such as acid getting
splashed on his face.
The setting of the
novel is crucial to certain elements in the story. One example is the character
of the phantom and his relationship to the opera house. The phantom is a
skilled artist, which is a quality that is usually associated with the desire
to showcase and display, but this is a character who feels the need to hide
away. The phantom hiding away due to his appearance suggests that the character
holds a lot of shame even if he still practices a skill that people would
admire. Perhaps, the author intentionally had the phantom hide away in a
setting that is meant to be displayed due to its intense grandeur and opulence
to enhance the sad, unsettling feeling of a person who hides away due to their
appearance.
The novel is often
ominous and elusive due to the fact that it is centered around a person who
haunts the setting of the story, and the Palais Garnier was potentially chosen
as the setting because certain elements of the opera house could enhance the
ominous and elusive ambiance. The parts of the Palais Garnier that typically
get showcased, such as its grand exterior and most of its rich and magnificent
interior, do not look ominous or elusive, but parts of the building do. In the
novel, the phantom’s lair beneath the opera house is surrounded by a body of
water. The basement of the actual Palais Garnier holds a body of water. This is
because the people constructing the opera house wanted it to have a very deep
basement. As they built, the basement would flood with water due to its depth,
so they had to create an architectural design that would accommodate the depth
of the basement and the water that infiltrated it. They constructed an area
that would hold some of the underground water to release pressure from other
parts of the basement. This inspired Laroux when he depicted the phantom’s
lair. While this part of the opera house lacks the opulence the Palais Garnier
is usually associated with, it contains the ominous and elusive ambiance the
novel is associated with, making it a perfect environment for the phantom’s
lair.
The mixing of factual
elements with a fictional story can add allure to a novel since people will be
encouraged to decipher which parts of the story are true and which are false.
This is the case for Gaston Laroux’s The
Phantom of the Opera. Today, the opera house can be toured and people can
even purchase tickets to attend shows held at the opera house. Recently, people
are even able to stay the night in one of the opera house’s rooms which is
rented out by Laroux’s great-granddaughter, Véronique Leroux. When marketing
the stay at the opera house, Véronique Leroux
said, “My great-grandfather’s classic story has
inspired so many people through the years. This is the perfect time to honor
him and welcome ‘phans’ to the famous setting of his much-loved novel for a
once-in-a-lifetime stay.” The rich history of the Palais Garnier was an
inspiration for Leroux and his novel, The
Phantom of the Opera. Eventually, the novel became a successful piece of
literature that is now considered a classic, inspiring multiple movie
adaptations and a musical on Broadway; thus, Leroux’s novel not only was
inspired by the Palais Garnier’s history, but his novel also became a part of the famous opera
house’s history.
Work Cited
Leroux, Gaston. The Phantom of the Opera. 2023
“The
Phantom of the Opera’s Lair.” Atlas
Obscura, 6 June 2017, www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-water-tank-beneath-palais-garnier-paris-france.
“Palais
Garnier, Home of The Phantom of the Opera, is Now on Airbnb” News Airbnb, 12 February 2023, https://news.airbnb.com/palais-garnier-home-of-the-phantom-of-the-opera-is-now-on-airbnb/
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