About The Phantom of the Opera Book

Video Transcript

"I'm Christopher Rokosz, actor, director of both stage and screen and I want to share with you a little bit about the Phantom of the Opera, the book. Now this is one of my favorite pieces of literature. It was originally published in France, in French of course, in 1909 by Gaston Leroux. And as we go through this I will be butchering a lot of French words. The original pronunciation was Le Fantome de l'Opera. Again, a butchering of it. It was adapted into English in nineteen-eleven and has spawned - the book itself has - is now considered to be a piece of French classical literature, but in reality it went out of print several times in the nineteenth century. It's the adaptations, the several musicals, umpteen movies, radio play adaptations. Basically if there's a major form of media, it's been adapted to it from the Phantom of the Opera. Now the book takes place inside - or the story rather - takes place inside the Paris Opera House. Now the book is based on supposed happenings of hauntings inside the Paris Opera House. Most likely what happened was - it is traditional for theater rather and opera crews to play jokes on each other and things and create stories, they're a creative bunch, of hauntings. But the story of the Phantom of the Opera takes place like I say at the Paris Opera House. It involves a mysterious phantom who wreaks havoc and pulls the strings behind the scenes. In reality as the story unfolds we find out that he is a musical genius that's horribly disfigured that lives in the Catacombs in the rivers that are actually there underneath the Paris Opera House. I tell you, it's a - some consider it a horror story, a suspense story, it has intrigue, romance. There is a famous love relationship between the phantom - or I should say triangle between the Phantom, Christine, an ingenue chorus girl who he helps raise her career and bring her up, and the Viscount de Chagny, I said I'd butcher it, Raoul, who is also her love interest. It plays out with different - different elements of all of those things, romance, suspense, horror. Now if you've seen some of the adaptations they are all adaptations whether it be Webber's musical to you know, gosh, Robert England, famous for Freddy Krueger's adaptation of it on film. Just because it says Phantom of the Opera it is public domain, so you can just grab it and adapt it to your wildest dreams, you may or may not be seeing the true story that Gaston Leroux intended for you to see, the literature, the heart behind it. So if you have an interest in it, go out and read the Phantom of the Opera. I'm Christopher Rokosz."