Like Dumas, Gaston Leroux is wordy and stilted (at least in translation), but he wasn't as good a writer as Dumas. ![]() It reminded me a great deal of another French novel, Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, who was of course the original Batman. The multitalented Eric, aka the "Opera Ghost," possesses a vast array of talents, almost supernatural abilities, unlimited resources, and a convenient labyrinth of death traps and mechanical devices underneath Paris, a sort of Batman with the Joker's psychosis. The novel was a fairly typical gothic creeper of its day. I'm going to have to say the play, or at least the Andrew Lloyd Webber soundtrack, is better than the book. With an increasing pattern of fear and violence, The Phantom of the Opera begins to strike, but always with a beautiful young performer at the center of his deadly desires. Nothing is done, however, until the disappearance of Christine during her triumphant performance. Some allege to have seen the ghost in evening clothes moving about in the shadows. The story begins with an investigation into some strange reports of an "opera ghost", legendary for making the great Paris opera performers ill-at-ease when they sit alone in their dressing rooms.
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