The Phantom of the Opera (Monstrous Classics Collection) - Hardcover

Leroux, Gaston

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1665974672 ISBN 13: 9781665974677

Verlag: Aladdin, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

A new generation of young readers is sure to delight in this enduring tale of love and torment by Gaston Leroux originally published in 1909—featuring a freshly reimagined cover!

Filled with the spectacle of the Paris Opera House in the 19th century, this classic work of suspense remains a riveting journey into the dark regions of the human heart. The tale begins as an investigation into the strange stories of an “Opera ghost,” said to scare performers as they sit alone in their dressing rooms or walk along the building’s labyrinthine corridors.

But it isn’t until the triumphant performance of beautiful soprano Christine Daaé that the Phantom begins his attacks—striking terror in the hearts of everyone in the theater.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Gaston Leroux (1868–1927) was a French novelist whose best-known work, Le Fantôme de l’opéra or The Phantom of the Opera, has inspired many film and stage adaptations.

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Chapter I: Is It the Ghost? I IS IT THE GHOST?
IT WAS THE EVENING ON which MM. Debienne and Poligny, the managers of the opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement. Suddenly the dressing room of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers, was invaded by half a dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage after “dancing” Polyeucte. They rushed in amid great confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment to “run through” the speech which she was to make to the resigning managers, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was little Jammes—the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose-red cheeks, and the lily-white neck and shoulders—who gave the explanation in a trembling voice:

“It’s the ghost!” And she locked the door.

Sorelli’s dressing room was fitted up with official, commonplace elegance. A pier glass, a sofa, a dressing table, and a cupboard or two provided the necessary furniture. On the walls hung a few engravings, relics of the mother, who had known the glories of the old opera in the Rue le Peletier; portraits of Vestris, Gardel, Dupont, Bigottini. But the room seemed a palace to the brats of the corps de ballet, who were lodged in common dressing rooms where they spent their time singing, quarreling, smacking the dressers and hairdressers, and buying one another glasses of cassis, beer, or even rum, until the callboy’s bell rang.

Sorelli was very superstitious. She shuddered when she heard little Jammes speak of the ghost, called her a “silly little fool,” and then, as she was the first to believe in ghosts in general, and the opera ghost in particular, at once asked for details:

“Have you seen him?”

“As plainly as I see you now!” said little Jammes, whose legs were giving way beneath her, and she dropped with a moan into a chair.

Thereupon little Giry—the girl with eyes as black as sloes, hair as black as ink, a swarthy complexion, and her poor little skin stretched over poor little bones—added, “If that’s the ghost, he’s very ugly!”

“Oh, yes!” cried the chorus of ballet girls.

And they all began to talk together. The ghost had appeared to them in the shape of a gentleman in dress clothes, who had suddenly stood before them in the passage, without their knowing where he came from. He seemed to have come straight through the wall.

“Pooh!” said one of them, who had more or less kept her head. “You see the ghost everywhere!”

And it was true. For several months, there had been nothing discussed at the opera but this ghost in dress clothes who stalked about the building, from top to bottom, like a shadow, who spoke to nobody, to whom nobody dared speak, and who vanished as soon as he was seen, no one knowing how or where. As became a real ghost, he made no noise in walking. People began by laughing and making fun of this specter dressed like a man of fashion or an undertaker; but the ghost legend soon swelled to enormous proportions among the corps de ballet. All the girls pretended to have met this supernatural being more or less often. And those who laughed the loudest were not the most at ease. When he did not show himself, he betrayed his presence or his passing by accidents, comic or serious, for which the general superstition held him responsible. Had anyone met with a fall, or suffered a practical joke at the hands of one of the other girls, or lost a powder puff, it was at once the fault of the ghost, of the opera ghost.

After all, who had seen him? You meet so many men in dress clothes at the opera who are not ghosts. But this dress suit had a peculiarity of its own. It covered a skeleton. At least, so the ballet girls said. And, of course, it had a death’s head.

Was all this serious? The truth is that the idea of the skeleton came from the description of the ghost given by Joseph Buquet, the chief scene-shifter, who had really seen the ghost. He had run up against the ghost on the little staircase, by the footlights, which leads to “the cellars.” He had seen him for a second—for the ghost had fled—and to anyone who cared to listen to him he said:

“He is extraordinarily thin, and his dress coat hangs on a skeleton frame. His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. You just see two big black holes, as in a dead man’s skull. His skin, which is stretched across his bones like a drumhead, is not white but a nasty yellow. His nose is so little worth talking about that you can’t see it side-face; and the absence of that nose is a horrible thing to look at. All the hair he has is three or four long dark locks on his forehead and behind his ears.”

This chief scene-shifter was a serious, sober, steady man, very slow at imagining things. His words were received with interest and amazement; and soon there were other people to say that they too had met a man in dress clothes with a death’s head on his shoulders. Sensible men who had wind of the story began by saying that Joseph Buquet had been the victim of a joke played by one of his assistants. And then, one after the other, there came a series of incidents so curious and so inexplicable that the very shrewdest people began to feel uneasy.

For instance, a fireman is a brave fellow! He fears nothing, least of all fire! Well, the fireman in question, who had gone to make a round of inspection in the cellars and who, it seems, had ventured a little farther than usual, suddenly reappeared on the stage, pale, scared, trembling, with his eyes starting out of his head, and practically fainted in the arms of the proud mother of little Jammes.1 And why? Because he had seen coming toward him, at the level of his head, but without a body attached to it, a head of fire! And, as I said, a fireman is not afraid of fire.

The fireman’s name was Pampin.

The corps de ballet was flung into consternation. At first sight, this fiery head in no way corresponded with Joseph Buquet’s description of the ghost. But the young ladies soon persuaded themselves that the ghost had several heads, which he changed about as he pleased. And, of course, they at once imagined that they were in the greatest danger. Once a fireman did not hesitate to faint, leaders and front-row and back-row girls alike had plenty of excuses for the fright that made them quicken their pace when passing some dark corner or ill-lighted corridor. Sorelli herself, on the day after the adventure of the fireman, placed a horseshoe on the table in front of the stage-door-keeper’s box, which everyone who entered the opera otherwise than as a spectator had to touch before setting foot on the first tread of the staircase. This horseshoe was not invented by me—any more than any other part of this story, alas!—and may still be seen on the table in the passage outside the stage-door-keeper’s box, when you enter the opera through the court known as the Cour de l’Administration.

To return to the evening in question.

“It’s the ghost!” little Jammes had cried.

An agonizing silence now reigned in the dressing room. Nothing was heard but the hard breathing of the girls.

At last, Jammes, flinging herself upon the farthest corner of the wall, with...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Aladdin
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1665974672
• ISBN 13: 9781665974677
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar