Phantom of the Opera (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

twenty-first century, including other film versions (such as Universal’s extravagant 1943 remake of its own 1925 adaptation, directed by Arthur Lubin and with Claude Rains in the role of the phantom, and the 1962 British rendering by Terence Fisher, to name only two), made-for-television versions, an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical (which first opened in London in 1986 and will soon begin its eighteenth year on Broadway at the Majestic Theater), and a lavish 2004 film remake of Lloyd Webber’s musical, directed by Joel Schumacher. Like its thematic ancestors The Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera, with its haunted and haunting representation of the inextricable connection between art, love, and loss has both infinite possibilities of reinvention and a timeless, universal appeal. While the successive versions continue to spin as much, and perhaps more, off each other as off Leroux’s text, Leroux’s original conjuring—despite its lukewarm critical reception—nonetheless remains the core of an amazing popular and cultural phenomenon. For the reader who takes the time to sit down with the novel, the result is a deeper understanding and appreciation of a story that will undoubtedly live on and on.
     
    Isabel Roche has a Ph.D. in French literature from New York University and teaches at Bennington College in Vermont. Her research interests include Hugo and his fiction, and French Romanticism. She has published articles in The French Review and French Forum. Her book Character and Meaning in the Novels of Victor Hugo will be published by Purdue University Press in early 2007.



1
    IS IT THE GHOST?
    I t was the evening on which MM. Debienne and Poligny, the managers of the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement. Suddenly the dressing-room of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers, was invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage after “dancing” Polyeucte. 1 They rushed in amid great confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment to “run through” the speech which she was to make to the resigning managers, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was little Jammes—the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose-red cheeks and the lily-white neck and shoulders—who gave the explanation in a trembling voice:
    “It’s the ghost!” And she locked the door.
    Sorelli’s dressing-room was fitted up with official, commonplace elegance. A pier-glass, a sofa, a dressing-table and a cupboard or two provided the necessary furniture. On the walls hung a few engravings, relics of the mother, who had known the glories of the old Opera in the Rue le Peletier; 2 portraits of Vestris, Gardel, Dupont, Bigottini. But the room seemed a palace to the brats of the corps de ballet, who were lodged in common dressing-rooms where they spent their time singing, quarrelling, smacking the dressers and hair-dressers and buying one another glasses of cassis, beer or even rhum, until the call-boy’s bell rang.
    Sorelli was very superstitious. She shuddered when she heard little Jammes speak of the ghost, called her a “silly little fool” and then, as she was the first to believe in ghosts in general, and the Opera ghost in particular, at once asked for details:
    “Have you seen him?”
    “As plainly as I see you now!” said little Jammes, whose legs were giving way beneath her, and she dropped with a moan into a chair.
    Thereupon little Giry—the girl with eyes black as sloes, hair black as ink, a swarthy complexion and a poor little skin stretched over her poor bones—little Giry added:
    “If that’s the ghost, he’s very ugly!”
    “Oh, yes!” cried the chorus of ballet-girls.
    And they all began to talk together. The ghost had appeared to them in the shape of a gentleman in dress-clothes, who had