In the introduction to the novel, Leroux frames the story as a historical recount of one of the biggest tragedies that hit the Parisian upper class. In those vaults, he also stored enough gunpowder in the bowels of the Opera so, should Christine refuse to be his bride, he would be able to blow the whole structure up. That’s how he ends up in Paris, where he managed to create a labyrinthine system in the cellars of the Paris Opera. In all those places, he stood out for being a gifted architect. He was shunned by his mother, who never gave him a kiss because she was disgusted by him, and he ran away as a child and made a living as a freak-show attraction and led a nomadic life between the court of the Shah of Persia, South-East Asia and Constantinople. We find out that the Phantom’s real name is Erik and that his face, covered in yellow dead flesh, is noseless, lipless and resembles a dried-up skull.
In the original novel, thanks to a character known as The Persian, we are given a much more detailed back story of one of the most tragic characters in fiction, opera and musical theatre. “I was actually writing something else at the time,” he reminisced in The Phantom of the Opera Companion, “and I realized that the reason I was hung up was because I was trying to write a major romantic story, and I had been trying to do that ever since I started my career. Back in 1984, his artistic goals were set towards a romantic piece, and when he found a second-hand copy of Leroux’s novel (which, by that time, was long out of print), inspiration struck. Webber drew inspiration from Gaston Leroux’s novel published in 1909-10. In fact, Christine is in love with Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny, who is one of the new patrons of the Opera. Musical theatre lovers rave about the title song of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of The Opera: a rock performance literally erupts within the gilded walls of an opera house, as The Phantom lures Christine Daae, a promising soprano and the quintessential ingenue to his lair in the bowels of the theater-also complete with a lake! They both refer to each other as “Angel of Music,” but unfortunately he is nothing more than a teacher to her, whereas his obsession for her is, well, quite morbid.
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