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47-606: In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera ( French : Le Fantôme de l'Opéra , 1909), which has been made into several film and stage productions of the same name, notably the 1925 film starring Lon Chaney and Andrew Lloyd Webber 's 1986 musical . His 1907 novel The Mystery of the Yellow Room is one of the most celebrated locked room mysteries . Leroux

94-536: A Gothic romance . In his article, Fitzpatrick compares the Phantom to other monsters featured in Gothic novels such as Frankenstein's monster , Dr. Jekyll, Dorian Gray, and Count Dracula . The Phantom has a torture chamber where he kidnaps and kills people, and the walls of the chapel in the graveyard are lined with human bones. Drumright notes that The Phantom of the Opera checks off every trope necessary to have

141-481: A Gothic novel according to the Encyclopedia of Literature's description which says, "Such novels were expected to be dark and tempestuous and full of ghosts, madness, outrage, superstition, and revenge." Although the Phantom is really just a deformed man, he has ghost-like qualities in that no one can ever find him or his lair and he is seen as a monster. People are frightened by him because of his deformities and

188-503: A detective mystery entitled The Mystery of the Yellow Room in 1907, and four years later he published Le Fantôme de l'Opéra . The novel was first published in newspapers before finally being published as a book. The setting of The Phantom of the Opera is the actual Paris opera house, the Palais Garnier . Leroux had heard the rumours about the time the opera house was finished, and these rumours became closely linked with

235-584: A lawyer in Caen (graduating in 1889), He inherited millions of francs and lived wildly until he nearly reached bankruptcy. In 1890, he began working as a court reporter and theater critic for L'Écho de Paris . His most important journalism came when he began working as an international correspondent for the Paris newspaper Le Matin in 1893. He was present at, and covered, the 1905 Russian Revolution . He left journalism in 1907, after returning from covering

282-538: A movie in 1925. Leroux did not live to see all the success from his novel and its subsequent critical re-evaluation; he died in April 1927. There have been many literary and other dramatic works based on Leroux's novel, ranging from stage musicals to films to children's books. Some well-known stage and screen adaptations of the novel are the 1925 film and the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical . Leroux's novel

329-512: A return to London, and two new stories appeared in Dennis Wheatley 's anthologies Quiver of Horror (1964) and Shafts of Fear (1964). This was followed by eight collections of original Birkin stories, beginning with The Kiss of Death (1964) and ending with Spawn of Satan (1970). This last volume was published in the US only. Birkin's work is much in the tradition of the conte cruel and

376-489: A volcanic eruption and being immediately sent on another assignment without vacation time, and began writing fiction. In 1919, he and Arthur Bernède formed their own film company, Société des Cinéromans , publishing novels and turning them into films. He first wrote a mystery novel titled Le mystère de la chambre jaune (1907; English title: The Mystery of the Yellow Room ), starring the amateur detective Joseph Rouletabille . Leroux's contribution to French detective fiction

423-527: Is considered a parallel to those of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the United Kingdom and Edgar Allan Poe in the United States. Leroux published his most famous work, The Phantom of the Opera , as a serial in 1909 and 1910, and as a book in 1910 (with an English translation appearing in 1911). Balaoo followed in 1911, which was made into a film several times (in 1913, 1927 and 1942). Leroux

470-462: Is entitled, Le masque de cire (translated as The Wax Mask ). The Phantom of the Opera (novel) The Phantom of the Opera ( French : Le Fantôme de l'Opéra ) is a novel by French author Gaston Leroux . It was first published as a serial in Le Gaulois from 23 September 1909 to 8 January 1910, and was released in volume form in late March 1910 by Pierre Lafitte . The novel

517-399: Is given). Neither "Alexander Peters" nor "Fantasy Book" appear to exist, and the text of the story is, in fact, a word-for-word copy of the story Figures de cire by Andre de Lorde which was published as Waxworks in the 1933 anthology Terrors: A Collection of Uneasy Tales, edited (anonymously) by Charles Birkin . The confusion has sometimes caused Leroux to be erroneously credited with

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564-574: Is partly inspired by historical events at the Paris Opera during the nineteenth century, and by an apocryphal tale concerning the use of a former ballet pupil's skeleton in Carl Maria von Weber 's 1841 production of Der Freischütz . It has been successfully adapted into various stage and film adaptations, most notable of which are the 1925 film depiction featuring Lon Chaney , and Andrew Lloyd Webber 's 1986 musical . Leroux initially

611-401: Is styled as a mystery novel , as its frame is narrated by a detective acquiring his information through various investigations. The mystery under investigation is the identity and motive of 'the Phantom' who lurks through the opera house, seemingly appearing out of nowhere as if by magic in inaccessible places. But, it seems that the mystery novel frame story is a façade for the genre being more

658-713: The Sherwood Foresters . The first telegraphed report of the D-Day landings in Normandy, sent by Roger Greene of the Associated press, was received in New York June 8, 1944. Greene wrote: "My escorting officer, Sir Charles Birkin, was slightly wounded three times in the first 15 minutes ashore and three men were killed within five feet of me...." After a long hiatus, Birkin resumed writing in 1960, following

705-923: The grand guignol . From 1970 to 1974 he lived in Cyprus which he fled after getting caught up in the violence following the Turkish invasion. His short story A Low Profile (1977) reflects his experiences there. He married Australian actress Janet Ramsey Johnson , the daughter of Peter Johnson, and had a two daughters and a son, John Birkin. John Birkin became known as a director of many notable British television comedies including Mr. Bean , French and Saunders , and Harry Enfield's Television Programme . He and his wife spent their later years in Sulby, Isle of Man . Birkin died in 1985. Birkin's short stories have been estimated as numbering over one hundred. In December 2017, editor and genre historian Johnny Mains, revealed

752-937: The "based on" wording and instead used "inspired by" in the show's Playbill, much to O'Connell's dismay. This musical adaptation, which won some of the most prestigious theatre awards in the UK and the US, first premiered in London in 1986 and on Broadway in 1988. Phantom has since become the longest-running musical on Broadway (it ran for 35 years before closing in 2023) and is still running in London (the second longest-running West End musical behind Les Misérables ). The show has also received multiple international productions and translations, yet has never been performed professionally in France. Charles Birkin Sir Charles Lloyd Birkin, 5th Baronet (24 September 1907 – 1985)

799-488: The 1880s, in Paris , the Palais Garnier Opera House is believed to be haunted by an entity known as the 'Phantom of the Opera', or simply the 'Opera Ghost', after stagehand Joseph Buquet is found hanged, the noose around his neck missing. At a gala performance for the retirement of the opera house's managers, a young, little-known Swedish soprano, Christine Daaé , is called upon to sing in place of

846-478: The Opera . The underground "lake" that he wrote about, in reality an enormous cistern, does exist beneath the opera house, and it is still used for training firefighters to swim in the dark. The serialized version contains an entire chapter ( "L'enveloppe magique" ) that does not appear in the novel version—though much of its content was added in other chapters—and was not reprinted in English until 2014. In

893-805: The Persian, using the water which would have been used to douse the explosives. Still, Christine begs, promising him not to kill herself after becoming his bride. Erik releases Raoul and 'the Persian' from his torture chamber. When Erik is alone with Christine, he lifts his mask to kiss her on her forehead and is eventually given a kiss back. Erik reveals he has never kissed anyone, including his own mother, who would run away if he ever tried to kiss her. Moved, he and Christine cry together. She also holds his hand and says, "Poor, unhappy Erik", which reduces him to "a dog ready to die for her". He allows 'the Persian' and Raoul to escape, though not before making Christine promise that she will visit him on his death day and return

940-587: The Yellow Room and The Perfume of the Lady in Black . Although previous commentators have asserted that The Phantom of the Opera did not attain as much success as these previous novels, being particularly unpopular in France where it was first published, recent research into the novel's early reception and sales has indicated the contrary. One book review from the New York Times expressed disappointment in

987-403: The acts of violence he commits. The novel features a love triangle between the Phantom, Christine, and Raoul. Raoul is seen as Christine's childhood love whom she is familiar with and has affection for. He is rich and therefore offers her security as well as a wholesome, Christian marriage. The Phantom, on the other hand, is not familiar. He is dark, ugly and dangerous, and therefore represents

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1034-479: The audience, killing a spectator. The Phantom, having abducted Christine from her dressing room, reveals himself as a deformed man called Erik . Erik intends to hold her prisoner in his lair with him for a few days. Still, she causes him to change his plans when she unmasks him and, to the horror of both, beholds his skull-like face. Fearing that she will leave him, he decides to hold her permanently. However, when Christine requests release after two weeks, he agrees on

1081-465: The condition that she wear his ring and be faithful to him. On the roof of the Opera House, Christine tells Raoul about her abduction and makes Raoul promise to take her away to where Erik can never find her, even if she resists. Raoul says he will act on his promise the next day. Unbeknownst to Christine and Raoul, Erik is watching them and overheard their whole conversation. The following night,

1128-427: The direction of the movie. His take on the novel, making it a dark romantic movie with comedy, was not popular with audiences. Finally, the film was reworked one last time by Maurice Pivar and Lois Weber . They removed most of Sedgwick's contributions and returned to the original focus. This time, the movie was a success with audiences. The most famous adaptation of the novel was Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical of

1175-505: The enraged and jealous Erik abducts Christine during a production of Faust and tries to force her to marry him. Raoul is led by a mysterious Opera House regular, 'the Persian', into Erik's secret lair in the bowels of the building. Still, they end up trapped in a mirrored room by Erik, who threatens that unless Christine agrees to marry him, he will kill them and everyone in the Opera House by using explosives. Under duress, Christine agrees to marry Erik. Erik initially tries to drown Raoul and

1222-461: The forbidden love. However, Christine is drawn to him because she sees him as her Angel of Music, and she pities his existence of loneliness and darkness. By the time Leroux published The Phantom of the Opera , he had already gained credibility as a crime mystery author in both French- and English-speaking countries. He had written six novels prior, two of which had garnered substantial popularity within their first year of publication: The Mystery of

1269-486: The graveyard scene that comes later where the Phantom plays the fiddle for Christine and attacks Raoul when he tries to intervene. Drumright points out that music is evident throughout the novel in that it is the basis for Christine and Erik's relationship. Christine sees Erik as her Angel of Music that her father promised would come to her one day. The Phantom sees Christine as his musical protégé, and he uses his passion for music to teach her everything he knows. The novel

1316-581: The lead role. The Gaston Leroux Bedside Companion , an anthology published in 1980 and edited by Peter Haining , as well as the Haining-edited The Real Opera Ghost and Other Tales By Gaston Leroux (Sutton, 1994), include a story attributed to Leroux entitled The Waxwork Museum . A foreword alleges that the translation by Alexander Peters first appeared in Fantasy Book in 1969 (but no original French publication date

1363-475: The managers. Leroux uses the operatic setting in The Phantom of the Opera to use music as a device for foreshadowing. Ribière makes note that Leroux was once a theatre critic and his brother was a musician, so he was knowledgeable about music and how to use it as a framing device. She uses the example of how Leroux introduces Danse macabre which means "dance of death" in the gala scene which foreshadows

1410-420: The novel: Act One of the opera Hellé had just finished when a fire in the roof of the opera house melted through a wire holding a counterweight for the chandelier, causing a crash that injured several and killed one. Using this accident paired with rumours of a ghost in that same opera house, Leroux wrote Le Fantôme de l'Opéra and published it in 1910, which was later published in English as The Phantom of

1457-533: The opera's leading soprano, Carlotta, who is ill. Christine's performance is a success. Among the audience is the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, who recognizes her as his childhood playmate and recalls his love for her. He attempts to visit her backstage, where he hears a man complimenting her from inside her dressing room. He investigates the room once Christine leaves, only to find it empty. At Perros-Guirec , Christine meets with Raoul, who confronts her about

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1504-531: The process. Back at the Palais Garnier, the new managers receive a letter from the Phantom demanding that they allow Christine to perform the lead role of Marguerite in Faust and that box 5 be left empty for his use, lest they perform in a house with a curse on it. The managers assume his demands are a prank and ignore them. Soon after, Carlotta ends up croaking like a toad, and a chandelier drops into

1551-518: The pseudonym "Charles Lloyd"), these being later collected as Devil's Spawn (1936). According to E.F. Bleiler, in the Creeps series "editorial stress was on fairly low-brow stories of horror and sadism, although stories by H. Russell Wakefield helped to raise the level of individual volumes." He succeeded his uncle as 5th Baronet Birkin in 1942. During the Second World War he served in

1598-438: The ring he gave her. He also makes 'the Persian' promise that afterward, he will go to the newspaper and report his death, as he will die soon "of love." Later, Christine returns to Erik's lair, and per his request returns the ring and buries him 'somewhere he will never be found'. Afterward, a local newspaper runs the note: "Erik is dead". Christine and Raoul then elope together, never to return. The epilogue reveals that Erik

1645-518: The same name . With his second-hand copy of the novel and his artistic goals set on creating a major romantic piece, Lloyd Webber and his team wrote a musical that honored the original text while crafting a story that resonated deeply with audiences at the time. During the show's development, however, there were disagreements over whether it was "inspired by" or "based on" Gaston Leroux's novel. Bill O'Connell, an assistant to film producers in New York at

1692-403: The squeamish. Be warned, if you are at all sensitive, leave him well alone. He deals unflinchingly with such subjects as murder, rape, concentration camps, patricide, mutilation and torture. What most marks his tales is the predictable nastiness of their consclusions...Doom arrives with monotonous regularity...For many readers, this genteelly tricked-up sadism was what horror was all about. Birkin

1739-618: The stories from the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum , the 1953 film House of Wax (both of which were based on a story by Charles S. Belden ) or, particularly, the 1997 Italian film Wax Mask (for example, in Troy Howarth's Splintered Visions: Lucio Fulci and His Films ). No such story by Leroux exists, though some confusion may have been the result of chapter IX in Leroux's novel La double vie de Théophraste Longuet, which

1786-419: The time, contended for the show to appear as "based on" rather than "inspired by", as he viewed the latter as a minimization of Gaston Leroux's original involvement with the story. Lawyers for producer Cameron Mackintosh and Webber's Really Useful Theatre Company responded, saying that it was never their intention "to fail to give appropriate prominence to the contribution of M. Leroux". They didn't, however, use

1833-401: The voice he heard in her room. Christine says she has been tutored by the "Angel of Music", whom her father used to tell her and Raoul about. When Raoul suggests that she might be the victim of a prank, she storms off. Christine visits her father's grave one night, where a mysterious figure appears and plays the violin for her. Raoul attempts to confront the figure but is struck and knocked out in

1880-487: The way the phantom was portrayed, saying that the feeling of suspense and horror is lost once it is found out that the phantom is just a man. The majority of the notability that the novel acquired early on was due to its publication in a series of installments in French, American, and English newspapers. This serialized version of the story became important when it was read and sought out by Universal Pictures to be adapted into

1927-582: Was an English writer of horror short stories and the editor of the Creeps Library of anthologies . Typically working under the pseudonym Charles Lloyd, Birkin's tales tended towards the conte cruels rather than supernatural fiction , although he did write some ghost stories . In the 1960s one author was almost solely responsible for keeping the horror genre alive in Britain, Sir Charles Birkin. The stories of Charles Birkin, however, are not for

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1974-555: Was born deformed, and the son of a construction business owner. He ran away from his native Normandy to work in fairs and caravans, schooling himself in the circus arts across Europe and Asia, and eventually building trick palaces in Persia and Turkey. Returning to France, he started his own construction business. After being subcontracted to work on the Palais Garnier's foundations, Erik discreetly built his secret lair, complete with hidden passages and other tricks that allowed him to spy on

2021-621: Was born in Paris in 1868, the illegitimate child of Marie Bidaut and Dominique Leroux, who married a month after his birth. He claimed an illustrious pedigree, including descent from William II of England (in French, Guillaume le Roux), son of William the Conqueror , and social connections such as having been the official playmate of Prince Philippe, Count of Paris at the College d'Eu in Normandy. After schooling in Normandy and studying as

2068-401: Was going to be a lawyer, but after spending his inheritance gambling he became a reporter for L'Écho de Paris . At the paper, he wrote about and critiqued dramas, as well as being a courtroom reporter. With his job, he was able to travel frequently, but he returned to Paris where he became a writer. Because of his fascination with both Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , he wrote

2115-618: Was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur in 1909. He died at age 58 in Nice, France, in 1927. Leroux married twice, first to Marie Lefranc from whom he separated in 1902. Following his separation, he then lived with Jeanne Cayatte from Lorraine , with whom he had a son, Gaston, nicknamed Milinkij, and daughter Madeleine; they married in 1917 after Lefranc's death. In 1918, he founded a film production company, Société des Cinéromans with René Navarre and debuted two films Tue-la-Mort and Il etait deux petits enfants , in which his daughter played

2162-403: Was made into two silent films. The first film version, a German adaptation called Das Gespenst im Opernhaus , is now a lost film . It was made in 1916 and was directed by Ernest Matray. The next adaptation, a 1925 Universal Studios silent film, stars Lon Chaney as the Phantom. Due to tensions on the set, there was a switch in directors and Edward Sedgwick finished the film while changing

2209-510: Was the son of Colonel Charles Wilfred Birkin and Claire Howe, the daughter of Alexander Howe. Freda Dudley Ward was a sister. He was educated at Eton College and was later employed by the publisher Philip Allan to anonymously edit the Creeps horror story anthologies, the first which appeared in 1932. Authors anthologized in the Creeps series included H. Russell Wakefield , Tod Robbins , H. D. Everett and Elliott O'Donnell . Birkin included stories of his own in most of these volumes (under

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