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| Erik | |
|---|---|
| The Phantom of the Opera character | |
 Lon Chaney as Erik, The Phantom, inUniversal's1925 silent film adaptation ofThe Phantom of the Opera | |
| First appearance | The Phantom of the Opera (1909) |
| Created by | Gaston Leroux |
| Portrayed by | Nils Olaf Chrisander Lon Chaney Claude Rains Herbert Lom Edward Petherbridge Maximilian Schell Chester Ludgin Peter Straker Michael Crawford Aiden Grennell Robert Englund Charles Dance Richard White David Staller John Owen-Jones Earl Carpenter Anthony Warlow Ramin Karimloo Ben Lewis Hugh Panaro Howard McGillin Norm Lewis Colm Wilkinson Anthony Crivello Davis Gaines Robert Guillaume Simon Bowman Gerard Butler |
| In-universe information | |
| Alias | The Phantom of the Opera Opera Ghost The Angel of Music |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Musician, composer. |
| Nationality | French |
Erik (also known asthe Phantom of the Opera, commonly referred to asthe Phantom) is the titular central character ofGaston Leroux'sLe Fantôme de l'Opéra, best known to English speakers asThe Phantom of the Opera. The character has been adapted to alternative media several times, including in the1925 film adaptation starringLon Chaney, the1943 remake starringClaude Rains, the1962 remake starringHerbert Lom andAndrew Lloyd Webber'smusical.
In the original novel, few details are given regarding Erik's past. The novel confirms that Erik has traveled to multiple countries includingFrance,Russia,Persia andnorthern Vietnam, learning variousarts andsciences from each region. Erik himself laments the fact that his mother was horrified by his birthdeformity and that his father, a masterconstruction mason, never saw him. Most of the character's history is revealed by a mysterious figure, known through most of the novel asThe Persian or the Daroga, who saved Erik's life in Persia, and followed Erik toParis; other details are discussed in the novel'sepilogue (e.g., his birthplace is given as a small town outside ofRouen,France).[citation needed] In the novel, Erikoften refers to himself in the third person, a detail that didn't make it into any subsequent adaptations.
Many different versions of Erik's life are told through other adaptations such as films, television shows, books, and musicals. One such popular literary adaptation is theSusan Kay novelPhantom (1990), a fictional in-depth story of Erik from the time of his birth to the end of his life at the Paris Opera House.
For the most part, Kay's novel stays in context with Erik's life history as laid down by Leroux. However, Kay (as explained in her Author's Note) changes and shapes the character to match her own vision, influenced by other adaptations besides the original. In addition, the ending/resolution is quite different from Leroux's. The story follows Erik through his entire life, starting with the night of his birth, and is told from differentviewpoints throughout the novel (Erik's mother, Erik, Nadir/the Persian, Christine, and Raoul). Kay places the highest priority on portraying romantic aspects of Erik's life.[citation needed]
The theatrical team ofMaury Yeston (Music and Lyrics) andArthur Kopit (Book) created a musical based on the novel,Phantom, which investors backed out of after Webber's version became a huge hit. In this version, Erik has spent his entire life living beneath the Opera. Over the years, he became possessive of the Opera, and the creative driving force for the company. No artistic decision is made without Gerard Carriere seeking his approval.[citation needed]
He offers to teach Christine Daaé to sing after hearing her working in the costume shop, and falls in love with her.[citation needed]
This storyline was also the basis for the1990 miniseries starringCharles Dance,Teri Polo, andBurt Lancaster as Carriere.[citation needed] and the show has received over 1000 theatrical productions worldwide.
InNicholas Meyer's 1993 novelThe Canary Trainer,Sherlock Holmes develops several theories as to the Phantom's identity:[1]
Holmes therefore admits that he is not sure how true any of the theories or claims of the Phantom's identity are. The Phantom never provides agiven name in the novel; he only tells Christine that his name is "Nobody".
Regardless of his identity, the Phantom inThe Canary Trainer is much more unhinged and bloodthirsty than in the original novel or play: for example, when killing Madame Giry's replacement with thechandelier, he kills "almost thirty men and women in the twinkling of an eye", just to ensure that he kills his main target.[1]
The Phantom is also more psychologically disturbed, to the extent that he tells Holmes that he has been "taught" not to speak without hismask, as his mother forced him to wear it whenever he wished to speak as a child. When Holmes knocks the mask off in their final confrontation he then only communicates in snarls and other animalistic sounds.[1]
In Sam Siciliano's novelThe Angel of the Opera, Sherlock Holmes is brought in to solve the case of the Opera Ghost, and both Erik's and Holmes's stories unfold through the eyes of Holmes's assistant, Henri Vernier. Siciliano places Holmes and Vernier at several of the crucial scenes in Erik and Christine's relationship, and draws parallels between Erik and Holmes. Holmes sympathizes with Erik so much that after Christine leaves him, Holmes brings him back to England. One of the first people that Erik meets on his arrival is ablind girl with a fondness for music.[citation needed]
In the original novel, Erik is described ascorpse-like and is referred to as having a "death's-head" throughout the story. He has no nose, and his eyes are sunken so deep in his skull that all that is seen are two eye sockets, except when his yellow eyes glow in the dark. His skin is yellowed and tightly stretched across his bones, and only a few wisps of dark brown hair are behind his ears and on his forehead.
His mouth is never described in as much detail, but is referred to as a "dead mouth" by Christine, and Erik acknowledges that his mouth is abnormal when lifting up his mask to displayventriloquism. He is described as extremely thin, so much so that he resembles a skeleton. Christine graphically describes his cold, bony hands, which also either feel or smell like death. There is debate among both English and French speakers as to whether the original French word used here,sentir, was intended by Leroux to mean "smells like" or "feels like", as the French word is used for both feel and smell depending on the context.
Erik woefully describes himself to Christine as a corpse who is "built up with death from head to foot". According to the Persian, Erik was born with this deformity and was exhibited asle mort vivant infreak shows earlier in his life. Erik sometimes plays up his macabre appearance, such as sleeping in a coffin as if he was avampire; he also costumes as the titular character fromEdgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" for the masked ball.[citation needed]
Lon Chaney's characterization of Erik in the silent filmThe Phantom of the Opera (1925) remains closest to the book in content, in that Erik's face resembles a skull with an elongated nose slit and protruding, crooked teeth. In this version, Erik is said to have been deformed at birth. Chaney was a masterful make-up artist and was considered avant-garde for creating and applying Erik's facial make-up design himself. It is said that he kept it secret until the first day of filming. The result was allegedly so frightening to the women of the time that theaters showing the movie were cautioned to keep smelling salts on hand to revive those who fainted.[citation needed]
Several movies based on the novel vary the deformities. InUniversal's 1943 adaptation, he is disfigured when the publisher's assistant throws etching acid in his face. In the musical horror filmPhantom of the Paradise (1974), Winslow (the Phantom character) gets his head caught in arecord press, while thehorror version (1989) starringRobert Englund has himselling his soul to Satan and having his face mutilated as a result. This version also has a gruesome variation on the mask, in which Erik is sewing flesh to his face.[citation needed]
InAndrew Lloyd Webber's1986 musical adaptation, only half of Erik's face is deformed (thus the famous half-mask often associated with Erik's appearance). His show was originally planned to have a full mask and full facial disfigurement, but when the director,Harold Prince, realized that it would make expression onstage very difficult, they halved the mask. The logo featuring a full mask was publicized before the change. The deformity in the musical includes a gash on the right side of his partially balding head with exposed skull tissue, an elongated right nostril, a missing right eyebrow, swollen lips, different colored eyes, and a wrinkled, warped right cheek. It is covered by a white half-mask and wig.[citation needed]
In the2004 film adaptation of the musical, Erik's makeup was made to look much less gruesome than previous adaptations of the story. Instead of a skull-like face, his disfigurement resembles that of a face mildly malformed by abirthmark, which he covers with the mask. Film criticRoger Ebert noted thatButler was more "conventionally handsome" than his predecessors "in aGQ kind of way".[2]
The1998 film adaptation starringJulian Sands as Erik is notable in that the character is not deformed and has instead a classically handsome face.
Onscreen, Erik has often been cast as atragic hero but also atragic villain, depending on the film's point of view.
See main list:The Phantom of the Opera andLove Never Dies
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From the memoirs of John H. Watson as edited by Nicholas Meyer
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