Book Review: The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

The Phantom of the opera is a well narrated horror, fiction, mystery, romance, adventure, in short a blend of various genres narrated beautifully into musical words. The story of the novel entails around the major characters that is, Erik, Christine and Raoul.

The novel can be summarized as follows. Apparently, the Paris opera was considered to be a haunted place. Christine was offered a position in the opera house and in that house she used to hear melancholic sounds, which eventually attracted her attention. News spread throughout the house that it was haunted and thereby the managers had to disprove this.

In Paris, Christine was visited by her childhood friend Raoul and through some meetings and engagements he figured out that Christine was having conversations with a strange man. She had suddenly developed the ability to sing and there were no traces as to who taught her and she accords the credit to the angel of music which her father refereed to as a dominant character in his stories, the voice belonged to the haunted ghost.

Gradually Eric and Christine shared a deep bond and their relationship strengthened over time, by watching all this Raoul realized that the ghost was a mad man and had taken Christine under his control because Christine had seen his real face. As a result of which Raoul made full attempts to run away with Christine but the haunted figure wouldn’t allow that.

At the time Leroux completed writing this book there were many rumors about haunted ghosts in cities which were all exaggerated stories. The author throughout the book had maintained the decorum of the scenes by using melodramatic words.

Every novel consists of a hero and heroine but the interest and suspense is maintained with another character like Eric in this story. He was the key element in making the novel feel more interesting, the phantom of the opera turned out to be a huge success and has been read and adapted worldwide.