Information about Erik, The Phantom Of The Opera

Erik is the title protagonist in The Phantom of the Opera.

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 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 tells in the novel.

Most of Erik's history is revealed by a mysterious figure, known through most of the novel as The Persian or "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 was born in a small town outside of Rouen, France. Born hideously deformed, he was a "subject of horror" for his family and as a result, he ran away as a young boy and fell in with a band of Gypsies, making his living as an attraction in freak shows, where he was known as "le mort vivant (the living dead)." During his time with the tribe, Erik became a great illusionist, magician and ventriloquist. His reputation for these skills and his unearthly singing voice spread quickly, and one day a fur trader mentioned him to the Shah of Persia. The Shah ordered the Persian to fetch Erik and bring him to the palace.

The Shah-in-Shah commissioned Erik, who proved himself a gifted architect, to construct an elaborate palace. The edifice was designed with so many trap doors and secret rooms that not even the slightest whisper could be considered private. The design itself carried 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 was 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 like his, ordered Erik to be blinded. Thinking that Erik could still make another palace even without his eyesight, the Shah ordered Erik's execution. It was only by the intervention of the Daroga (the Persian) that Erik was able to escape.

Erik then went to Constantinople and was employed by its ruler, helping build certain edifices in the Yildiz-Kiosk, among other things. However, he had to leave the city for the same reason he left Mazenderan: he knew too much.

By this time Erik was tired of his nomadic life and wanted to "live like everybody else". For a time he worked as a contractor, building "ordinary houses with ordinary bricks". He eventually bid on a contract to help with the construction of the Palais Garnier, commonly known as the Paris Opera House.

During the construction he was 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 built himself a house in the cellars of the Opera where he could live far from man's cruelty. We also know that Erik spent 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 Don Juan. He refuses and says, "I will play you Mozart, if you like, which will only make you weep; but my Don Juan, Christine, burns." Upon its completion, he originally planned to go to his bed (which is a coffin) and "never wake up," but by the final chapters of the novel, Erik had expressed his wish to marry Christine after his work had been completed.

Variations of Erik's history

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 starts on the night of Erik's birth. It is said that Erik's mother gives the task of naming her son to the priest 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.

In the story "His Father's Eyes" by Jean-Marc Lofficier & Randy Lofficier, published in 2004 in the Lofficiers' translation of the original novel, Erik is revealed to be the son 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 the death of Erik, although that death takes place off-stage and could well have been faked. Many fans, or "phans" accept that Erik died three weeks after he released Christine and Raoul. An ad was 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 1989 for example, Erik was believed to have died in combat until 100 years later where he later makes another attempt to make Christine his but fortunately, he dies when Christine destroys his musical piece which was the only way to kill him. In the 2004 adaption, he has escaped and is learned later to be still alive as he leaves a rose with the ring he gave her while he, Christine, and Raoul were still in his underground lair.

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 never make love in the original novel by Leroux, some adaptations choose to take liberties with this aspect of the story.

Erik's fate in various adaptations

1) The Broadway musical, written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and the movie based on the hit musical directed by Joel Schumacher, where we see him clearly escaping by a secret door in both versions.

2) In the silent; In this version, starred by the great Lon Chaney Sr, the final shot to the water where he was thrown after a mob beating him almost to death, and the vision of some bubbles gives us the idea of that Erik hasn't been destroyed yet. Even a sequel was prepared, written by the author of the novel, but Lon Chaney died before the project started, and the producers filmed a remake.

3) In another, the 1943 version starring Claude Rains, the acid-face Phantom is buried under piles of rock that collapsed on him. However, in the last shot of the lair, the Erique's violin and mask are arranged in a peculiar way. Also, some rocks are shifting in the back. A sequel was again planned, but Claude Rains was not interested, and the sequel became a prequel called 'The Climax' with Boris Karloff as the Phantom character.

4) The other time he survives is the 1989 Phantom of the Opera, starring famous horror/slasher film actor Robert Englund, who is most famous for the role as Freddy Krueger. 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. As always, a sequel was planned, at one time claimed to be completely finished.

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 one hundred years, and Raoul goes back to kill him in the past. However, when both men die while fighting on the chandelier, Raoul notices that everything again seems normal and Phantomless. However, just before the credits roll, the shadow of the Phantom rises behind him.

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 hands as the hands of the dead.

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. Chaney is reputed 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.

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 most of the film adaptions, some poor musician tries to publish his music, only to have it stolen by the publisher. The Phantom character then, in some way, tries to get his music back, only to have his face burned or injured in some way.

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 actual 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.

Actors/singers

• 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-musical 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 camp-classical 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.
• 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 adaption of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage version The Phantom of the Opera (2004 film)
• 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)

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