Erik (The Phantom of the Opera)
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Erik is the titular fictional character in Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera. He is also the antagonist of many film adaptations of the novel, notably the 1925 film adaptation starring Lon Chaney, Sr., and Andrew Lloyd Webber's West End musical.
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[edit] Character history
In the original novel, few details are given regarding Erik's past, although there is no shortage of hints and implications throughout the book. Erik himself laments the fact that his mother was horrified by his appearance and that his father, a master mason, never saw him. It is also revealed that "Erik" was not, in fact, his birth name, but one that was given or found "by accident", as Erik himself says in the novel. In the novel, Leroux sometimes calls him "the man's voice;" Erik also refers to himself as "The Opera Ghost," "The Angel of Music" and attends a masquerade as the Red Death.
Most of Erik's history is revealed by a mysterious figure, known through most of the novel as The Persian or the daroga, who had been a local police chief in Persia and who followed Erik to Paris; some of the rest is discussed in the novel's epilogue.
Erik is born in a small town outside of Rouen, France. Born hideously deformed, he is a "subject of horror" for his family and as a result, he runs away as a young boy and falls in with a band of Gypsies, making his living as an attraction in freak shows, where he is known as "le mort vivant (the living dead)." During his time with the tribe, Erik becomes a great illusionist, magician and ventriloquist. His reputation for these skills and his unearthly singing voice spreads quickly, and one day a fur trader mentions him to the Shah of Persia. The Shah orders the Persian to fetch Erik and bring him to the palace.
The Shah-in-Shah commissions Erik, who proves himself a gifted architect, to construct an elaborate palace. The edifice is designed with so many trap doors and secret rooms that not even the slightest whisper could be considered private. The design itself carries sound to a myriad of hidden locations, so that one never knew who might be listening. At some point under the Shah's employment, Erik is also a political assassin, using a unique noose referred to as the Punjab Lasso.
The Persian dwells on the vague horrors that existed at Mazenderan rather than going in depth into the actual circumstances involved. The Shah, pleased with Erik's work and determined that no one else should have such a palace, orders Erik blinded. Thinking that Erik could still make another palace even without his eyesight, the Shah orders Erik's execution. It is only by the intervention of the daroga (the Persian) that Erik escapes.
Erik then goes to Constantinople and is employed by its ruler, helping build certain edifices in the Yildiz-Kiosk, among other things. However, he has to leave the city for the same reason he left Mazenderan: he knows too much. He also seems to have traveled to Southeast Asia, since he claims to have learned to breathe underwater using a hollow reed from the "Tonkin pirates."
By this time Erik is tired of his nomadic life and wants to "live like everybody else". For a time he works as a contractor, building "ordinary houses with ordinary bricks". He eventually bids on a contract to help with the construction of the Palais Garnier, commonly known as the Paris Opera House.
During the construction he is able to make a sort of playground for himself within the Opera House, creating trapdoors and secret passageways throughout every inch of the theatre. He even builds himself a house in the cellars of the Opera where he could live far from man's cruelty. In his isolation, Erik spends 20 years composing a piece entitled "Don Juan Triumphant." In one chapter after he takes Christine to his lair, she asks him to play her a piece from his masterwork. He refuses and says, "I will play you Mozart, if you like, which will only make you weep; but my Don Juan, Christine, burns." Eventually, after she has wrenched off his mask and seen his deformed face, he begins to play it. Christine says that at first it seemed to be "one great awful sob," but then became alert to its nuances and power. Upon its completion, he originally plans to go to his bed (which is a coffin) and "never wake up," but by the final chapters of the novel, Erik expresses his wish to marry Christine and live a comfortable bourgeois life after his work has been completed. He has stored a massive supply of gunpowder under the Opera, and, should she refuse his offer, plans to detonate it. When she acquiesces to his desires in order to save herself, her lover Raoul and the denizens of the Opera, he relents and allows her to leave with Raoul, content that she has let herself be kissed on the forehead once by him. Erik dies shortly thereafter, and Christine returns to the Opera to place a plain gold band he had given her on his finger. Leroux claims that a skeleton bearing such a ring was later unearthed in the Opera cellars.
[edit] Variations of Erik's story
[edit] Phantom
Many different versions of Erik's life are told through other adaptations such as films, television shows, books, and musicals. The most popular of the adapted books is the Susan Kay novel, Phantom the fictional in-depth story of Erik from the time of his birth to the end of his life at the Paris Opera House.
The novel begins on the night of Erik's birth. It is said that Erik's mother gives the task of naming her son to the priest, Father Mansart, who visits her shortly after the birth. For the most part, Kay's novel stays in context with Leroux's, but she places the highest priority on portraying the romantic aspects of Erik's life. He falls in love twice throughout the novel, but neither of these occasions truly end happily.
[edit] Other stories
In the story "His Father's Eyes" by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier, published in 2004 in the Lofficiers' translation of the original novel, Erik is revealed to be the son of a woman whom Frankenstein's monster raped out of frustration soon after Victor Frankenstein refused to make him a bride. The title points out that both characters have yellow eyes.
Other novels, however, tend to focus more on Erik's life after the initial story. One such story, "Angels of Music" by Kim Newman, published in Tales of the Shadowmen Vol. 2 (2006) has Erik gather his own Charlie's Angels-like team of female agents, the so-called Angels of Music, consisting of Christine Daae, Irene Adler and Trilby O'Ferrall.
However, these books contradict the ending of the original novel, since a main event in Leroux's story is Erik's death, although that death takes place off-stage. In the end, an ad is published in the Epoque, a French newspaper, and read "Erik est mort." (Erik is dead). This ad was how Christine knew to go back and slip the ring Erik had given her onto Erik's finger, which was later found with his skeleton in 1909 near the little well.
In a slightly less known novel called Journey of the Mask by Nancy Hill Pettengill, the ending of Leroux's original version is seen in a slightly different light, with Erik faking his death (even going to the lengths to appear even more sickly than normal to convince the Persian of his death and have him publish the note in the newspaper) in a final attempt to draw Christine into his life. When she returns as promised, he drugs and kidnaps her, stealing her away to America. After the initial shock of what he had done, Christine accepts her new life in the city of New Orleans. They end up marrying and having a single child, a daughter, who died shortly after being born. Other well known historical figures from the time are characters in the novel, including the infamous voodoo witch Marie Lavou. Erik himself, having finally found happiness, dies a few short years later of heart failure, but not before his a portion of his musical writings are published and performed publicly as a gift to him from Christine.
Another aspect most of the adapted novels focus on is the love between Erik and Christine. Some even go so far as to give them a child (in Phantom, Christine bears Erik's child and raises it with Raoul, who never reveals that he knows the truth). Although Erik and Christine are never overtly depicted as having a sexual relationship in the original novel by Leroux (Erik rambles rapturously about being able to kiss her forehead just once), some adaptations choose to take liberties with this aspect of the story.
Professor James Moriarty, the villian of the movie adaptation of the comic book series, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, disguises him self as a criminal called 'the Phantom', wearing a metal mask resembling Erik's, but covers the entire top half of his face, instead of only half. While Moriarty/the Phantom, attacked Venice, Italy, in order to start a world war, his spy, the immortal Dorian Grey steals the parts of the League that Moriarty needs (genetic samples from Skinner, the invisible man, and Mina, the half-vampire, Dr. Jekyll's transformation formula, and pictures of Captain Nemo's submarine, The Nautilus) to sell to the warring nation who pays the most.
[edit] Erik's fate in various adaptations
1) In Webber's musical, The Phantom covers himself with a cloak, but when it is pulled back, he has disappeared, leaving his mask.
2) In Joel Schumacher's 2004 film adaptation, The Phantom escapes through a secret door behind a mirror. It is implied that he continued living, as a rose was seen on Christine's grave at the end of the movie.
3) In the 1925 film, Erik is lynched, bound, and thrown into the water. The movie ends with a shot of bubbles in the river in which he was thrown, slowly stopping, implying he truly died.
4) In the 1943 version starring Claude Rains, the Phantom (named Erique in this adaption) is buried under piles of rock that collapse on him. However, in the last shot of the film, his violin and mask are arranged in a peculiar way. Also, some rocks are shifting in the back. A sequel was again planned, but Rains was not interested, and the sequel became an unrelated film called The Climax with Boris Karloff as a Phantom-esque character.
5) He also survives in a 1989 film adaptation of Phantom of the Opera, starring Robert Englund. In this version, Erik Destler has sold his face to the Devil so his music could be loved by the world. After being killed twice, at the very end, a mysterious street violinist who bears resemblance to Erik begins to play his music for Christine, who looks back at him, and leaves. A sequel was planned, at one time claimed to be completely finished.
6) In Frederick Forsyth's sequel to Phantom of the Opera (Andrew Lloyd Webber's adaptation), The Phantom of Manhattan, Erik was given a backstory, rescued by Madame Giry at the age of sixteen from a traveling circus, and subsequently rescued again after the events of the musical. Disillusioned with humanity, he is smuggled across the Atlantic to Coney Island, where he becomes an extremely secretive yet successful multimillionaire, with a business protege named Darius. His disgust of humanity is tempered after he receives a letter from the dying Madame Giry, telling him that he has a son. His obsession with Christine returns, and with his funds he arranges for Christine to come over to America in order to meet her one more time.
Erik has also survived in a PC game called The Return of the Phantom, the title that was planned for all the other unmade sequels. In this, the Phantom comes back to life after 100 years, and Raoul goes back to the past to kill him. However, when both men die while fighting on the chandelier, Raoul notices that everything again seems normal. However, just before the credits roll, the shadow of the Phantom rises behind him.
[edit] Erik's deformity
In the Leroux novel, Erik is described as corpse-like with no nose; sunken eyes and cheeks; yellow, parchment-like skin; and only a few wisps of ink-black hair covering his head. He is often described as "a walking skeleton," and Christine graphically describes his cold hands, which "smelt of death."
The 1920s Lon Chaney version of the film remains closest to the book in content, and in the fact that Erik's face resembles a skull with an elongated nose slit and protruding, crooked teeth. Chaney was a master make-up artist and was considered avant garde for creating and applying Erik's facial makeup design himself. It is said he kept it secret until the first day of filming. The result was allegedly so frightening to the ladies of the time, theaters showing the movie were cautioned to keep smelling salts on hand for the women who fainted in shock.
Several movies based on the novel also vary the deformities (or in the case of Dario Argento's film, the lack thereof, where Erik was a normal, handsome man raised by rats). In Universal's 1943 adaptation, a poor musician tries to publish his music, and then wrongly accuses the publisher of trying to steal his music. The Phantom character then murders the publisher by strangulation and tries to retrieve his music, only to have his face burned by having etching acid thrown in his face by the publisher's female assistant. The rock opera Phantom of the Paradise has Winslow (the Erik character) get his head caught in a record-press and Robert Englund's horror-version has him selling 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)
In Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical adaptation (taking a tip from Universal's 1943 spin on the story), 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, Hal 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 partly balding head with exposed skull tissue, an elongated right nostril, a missing right eyebrow, deformed lips, and several red spots that appear to be scabs on the right cheek.
[edit] Performers
- Lon Chaney of the 1925 The Phantom of the Opera.
- Claude Rains of the 1943 Technicolor version, Phantom of the Opera.
- Herbert Lom of the 1962 The Phantom of the Opera.
- William Finley of the 1974 rock opera version of The Phantom of the Opera, Brian DePalma's Phantom of the Paradise.
- Edward Petherbridge, of the 1976 English play version.
- Maximillian Schell in the 1983 television series.
- Peter Straker in Ken Hill's musical version in 1984.
- Michael Crawford in the 1986 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical; The Phantom of the Opera (musical).
- Robert Englund in the 1989 horror film version.
- Richard White in Yeston/Kopit's stage version.
- Charles Dance in the 1990 NBC two-part television series.
- David Staller in his own camp-musical stage version.
- Julian Sands in Dario Argento's adaptation in 1998.
- Paul Stanley in a Toronto play version (1999)
- Marco Hietala in Nightwish's Century Child album (2002)
- Tilo Wolff in Dreams of Sanity's Album Masquerade (1999)
- Gerard Butler in the movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage version The Phantom of the Opera
- Yōka Wao in the adaptation of the Japanese premiere of Yeston/Kopit's musical version at Takarazuka Revue (2004)
- Sumire Haruno in the same adaptation at Takarazuka Revue (2006)
- Łukasz Zagrobelny, Damian Aleksander and Tomasz Steciuk in adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical in Teatr Roma, Warsaw, Poland (2008)
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