About the Phantom of the Opera

For today's countdown to Halloween post, another trip down memory lane, sort of. I had been wanting to reread The Phantom of the Opera  by Gaston Leroux. I am one of the few people who discovered the character through the novel and not the overrated musical. I had in mind to read it this year and share my impressions during the countdown. I wanted this year to be about le Fantôme, as it is sometimes about vampires or Jekyll and Hyde, or whatever. So I checked about all the versions available in French on Amazon and settled for one with an image of the original cover. It was cheap, but hey, I thought it should not be an issue. Big mistake. This is a terrible edition: the pages are not numbered, the editing is dreadful and while the text is in original French, biographical notes on Leroux are in English. You can see it was roughly patched together for suckers like me. And I can't read such poorly edited book, it's against my principles. I will return it. A darn shame, I wanted to rediscover the Phantom of the Opera and make you my readers discover the real deal, it will have to wait. But you can read how I first came to the novel in this post from 2019. Oh well, maybe next year. But at least you can enjoy a cool cover.

The (other) Phantom of the Opera (animated)

For tonight's third (!) countdown to Halloween post, a bit of a mystery for the classical horror fan that I am. You may know that The Phantom of the Opera is one of my obsessions. The original novel, NOT the musical. Although I do enjoy the various adaptations of the book. I blogged about my discovery of the novel in this post from 2019. Well, I discovered that there was a fairly recent animated adaptation, dating back from, well, err... I don't think it has been released yet, but here is its IMDB entry and here is its webpage. You will find below the trailer, dating back from 2014. It seems fairly faithful to the novel and the animation does not seem half bad. Has anybody seen it? If so, what did you think of it?

Relire Le fantôme de l'opéra

J'ai lu Le fantôme de l'opéra de Gaston Leroux il y a très, très longtemps. Avant même, en fait, de voir et de lire toutes les autres adaptations du roman. Ce dont j'ai toujours été assez fier. C'était l'édition que vous voyez ici, que mes parents ont encore à Chicoutimi. Mon programme de lecture dans les semaines avant l'Halloween est déjà bien costaud, j'ai des histoires d'horreur, qu'elles soient classiques ou non, pour durer jusqu'au 31 octobre, facilement. Je ne crois pas trouver assez de temps pour ce classique en particulier, mais je songe de plus en plus à me le procurer pour l'année prochaine. Je vais sans doute le réacheter, parce que 1)je ne pourrai sans doute pas mettre la main sur celui qui est à Chicoutimi et 2)c'est celui de la famille, pas le mien à moi tout seul. Et ça me permettra en plus d'acheter une autre édition.

How I discovered The Phantom of the Opera

Today for my countdown to Halloween post, I decided to blog bout a classic of Gothic horror. I blogged about The Phantom of the Opera a few times before, both in French and English. I blogged last year on how I discovered Dracula. So today's post is about how I discovered the most famous novel (and the best novel) of Gaston Leroux. As for Drac, I discovered Erik not through his various cinematic incarnations, or the now far too famous and overrated musical, but directly in the source material. Actually, that may not be quite true: I had also watched a stupid pseudo documentary horror drama featuring David Copperfield, but otherwise my mind was pretty much unspoiled, so to speak. Also, like for Dracula, I read the novel during summertime. I'm not certain which one I read before, I believe it was the Phantom.

The big difference between the other Gothic classics I discovered around that time, is that this one I did not read entirely by my own initiative and against my mother's wish, but through the encouragement of my father. He bought Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, the edition you see pictured here, out of a fascination for the movies he had watched, then decided to share it with his children. I must have been twelve at the time. I was blown away. I loved everything about it: the settings, the characters from the musical and operatic world, as well as the audiences, the tragic protagonist, still utterly evil, the whole mystery regarding his true nature and the unhealthy relationship he had with soprano Christine Daaé. I don't think any adaptation managed to truly picture Erik's duality, repulsive both morally and physically, yet genuinely tragic. Unlike many horror classics, this one had no supernatural source, in fact everything can be rationalised, but the Phantom's genius and skills were enough to give a quasi supernatural feel to the plot. The Phantom of the Opera is not my favourite Gothic horror novel, that would be Dracula, but it has a niche of its own and I'd love to revisit it one day.

La quête du Fantôme de l'Opéra

je pensais à ça récemment et il y a une autre bande dessinée d'horreur que je veux trouver pour l'Halloween. J'ai blogué il y a quatre ans sur celle-ci. C'est le deuxième tome d'une adaptation en bédé du Fantôme de l'Opéra. Le roman original, je l'ai lu il y a au moins un quart de siècle. Faudra bien le relire un jour. On a assez peu de classiques francophones dans l'horreur et celui-ci est tellement... tellement bon. La bédé a fait quelques changements douteux (des noms surtout, lire mon premier billet sur le sujet), mais je me souviens avoir aimé l'esthétique. Dans tous les cas, je veux ajouter du lustre à ma collection de livres d'horreur côté bédés.

Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (en bd)

Ah, les trésors que l'on retrouve dans les librairies de seconde main. Lors de ma visite à Montréal, je suis allé dans un nombre de bouquineries, dont L'Échange. J'y ai trouvé le premier tome de cette adaptation du Fantôme de l'Opéra de Gaston Leroux, l'un des premiers romans d'horreurs que j'aie lu. J'ai désespéré cherché le deuxième tome, mais ils ne l'avaient pas, je me suis donc contenté d'acheter le premier livre pour le moment. Plus tard, j'ai découvert que le tome 2 a été publié tout récemment, en septembre 2013.

Je l'ai laissé à Montréal, mais j'ai pris le temps de le lire, pour me mettre dans l'ambiance de l'Halloween qui approche à grands pas. L'adaptation est plutôt bien faite, bien que je trouve les dessins à l'intérieur de la bédé plutôt simplistes. La couverture est de loin plus léchée et plus impressionnante que le contenu. Christophe Gaultier a également pris une décision inexplicable et inutile: changer les noms de Christine et Raoul en Ingrid et en Pierre. C'est d'autant plus étrange que l'adaptation est très fidèle au roman original. La lecture est somme toute plaisante, justement parce que c'est une adaptation passablement fidèle, mais ce détail agace beaucoup. Cela dit, ne serait-ce que par curiosité, je vais me procurer le deuxième tome.

An anecdote about The Phantom of the Opera

I discovered yesterday something quite interesting: one of the versions of one of my favourite silent horror movies, The Phantom of the Opera, has my former opera teacher as the singer in the soundtrack. The Phantom of the Opera, Special Collector's Edition, which is maybe the most easily available high-quality versions of the classic movie in the UK (according to this guy, a Phantom buff), used a score interpreted by I Musici of Montreal, with the voice of Claudine Côté for the songs (mainly Faust arias),which was originally used back in the early 1990s. I loved that version, even though I only knew Claudine by reputation then. You can find more about it here.

With my love of horror stories and my love of operas, I was bound to discover the story. I first came to the Phantom through Gaston Leroux's original novel, rather than any cinematic version, or the Andrew Lloyd Webber's cheesy, marshmallow musical (which I used to like, but not anymore). It is a shame that the musical is now its most famous version, because the novel was a great read and the 1925 silent movie was both a very faithful adaptation and an entertaining, terryfying horror flick. The novel also made me discover Faust.

So yes, I love The Phantom of the Opera, but I wanted this post to be more about Claudine than the Phantom. Getting info about the silent movie made me remember that I once was friend with her, which makes it weird to see her name on Amazon or imdb. Back when she did the soundtrack, she was quite a famous soprano in Québec, having sung with Pavarotti right after she graduated. Now she is criminally underrated. When I started university in Montreal, I was looking for a new singing teacher (well, "new", I had only started a few months earlier) and got Claudine's phone number through a friend (small world, but it is true that she was from Saguenay like myself). She was living close to my flat, she was a respected singer, so she was the obvious choice. It was nice to do something different than literature and it was really a great hobby. Since I knew close to nobody in Montreal, the lessons cured me for any feeling of loneliness. Claudine taught me quite a lot and it is in great parts thanks to her that I still have a pretty good singing voice and a relatively good Italian pronunciation. She was also a great person to talk to, always smiling and enthusiastic. And a cat lover. She loved cats so much, she was adopting half the alley cats in her neighbourhood. She even saved the animals of a pet shop near her place when its building went on fire. So she was a generous person too. (And thinking about it, my wife would love her, as she was also an almost vegetarian for ethical reasons). I still remember her tone of voice when was calling me, always starting the conversation with "Bonjour Guillaume, c'est Claudiiiiiiiine", with the "i" prolonged, I think it was due to her line of work. She had gained an "accent chantant".

So I only have nice memories of her. I never got into contact with her after the three years it took me to do my degree in Montreal. I left for England in 1999 and never managed to get in touch with her after that. It is a shame really, as she was important to my artistic/dilettante life at the time. But hey, I can still listen to her, I can even find her voice here in England. So not all is lost.