The prima donna in fiction - Part 4 'The Phantom of the Opera'

Gaston Leroux probably derived some inspiration from Trilby for The Phantom of the Opera,[1] but created a gothic horror story rather than a melodrama.

The heroine of Phantom is Christine Daaé, a second rank soprano at the Paris Opéra. Like Trilby, her background is tragic and sentimental, and at least has the value of providing an important plot element. She is the talented daughter of a talented Swedish violinist who was ‘discovered’ and taken to France by a music professor. (Her mother is sadly but conveniently deceased.) Before his heart-wrenching early death her father tells her about the Angel of Music, who visits each talented person sometime during their life and brings their talent into fruition (p. 45). He promises on his deathbed that when he is in heaven he will send the Angel to her. But the Angel takes his time; after her father’s death Christine seemed to have lost her talent, but retained enough to get through the Conservatoire without much distinction.

It is from there that she passes into the company at the Paris Opéra, appearing in minor roles without great distinction, until the night her arch-rival Carlotta fails spectacularly on stage. Carlotta is the opposite of Christine. The cliché prima donna, she is temperamental (because of her hot Spanish blood, no doubt) and enjoys the trappings of stardom. The first time we see her she is ringing for her maid to bring her letters in bed (p. 60) – she enjoys luxury and extravagance, unlike the pure Christine, who lives simply and virtuously (and passively).

Christine, we find later, has been given tuition by a mysterious person who she thinks is the Angel of Music. Of course, this person is the Opera Ghost, who is in love with her. The Ghost insists that the managers of the Opéra give Christine the role of Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust (at that time the most popular opera in the world). The managers laughingly ignore the request, because they only know Christine as a second string singer. Carlotta goes on and is afflicted with a frog in the throat in the middle of Act III (when Marguerite has her most gratifying solos – the Roi de Thule aria and the Jewel Song). Carlotta’s humiliation is total; she withdraws from an important gala, Christine goes on instead and wows the audience, who have never heard her sing like this before. Success seems assured…

But – enter Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny. This young nobleman proposes to Christine, but she refuses him. The Angel of Music has told her that if she marries, she will never hear from him again (p. 71). The Ghost hears her declarations of love, and kidnaps her in order to lure Raoul into the depths of the Opéra to kill him… What terrors await Christine and Raoul? Will the Ghost succeed? And who is the mysterious Persian? You’ll have to read the book (and it’s worth reading, if only for the different flavour to the film versions.)

Leroux’s concept of art is more sophisticated than du Maurier’s, and gives Christine more ownership of her talent. She is not a Trilby – her talent was always there, waiting for the Angel of Music to touch her. This owes something to the Greek concept of the muses, who would visit the artist and bestow their genius upon him or her. Trilby is just a blank slate for men to write their dreams on, artistic and erotic.

Leroux’s variation on the ‘married to art’ trope is clever. Christine cannot marry Raoul, because if she does she will lose the Angel. We know that the ‘Angel’ wants to marry her, but this is not a case of Christine being the victim of two men. She doesn’t want to lose the Angel because he is the guarantor of her art. What works out in practice to be submission to another man is, to Christine, a choice in favour of music. An ineffective agency, but one she exercises, unlike the totally passive Trilby. But ultimately Christine will never have the career or the artistic fulfilment she has desired, because is at the mercy of the men who desire her. She may be talented, but she is still an object of the kind that Styr and Kronborg refuse to become.

[1] Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera, (London: Sphere Books, 1975; orig. 1911).