Phantoms of the Operas: Catastrophes of the Lyric Stage

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When I saw the 2004 film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, The Phantom of the Opera, I read reviews on the “Movie Review Query Engine” Web site (with 154 articles on this movie alone). James Verniere, in his December 22, 2004 Boston Herald critique, “This `Opera' Is a Crashing Bore,”  mentioned “the famous scene in which the opera house chandelier crashes down on the audience (based on an actual event that occurred in the Opéra Garnier in 1896).”

I couldn’t let it go at that, and set out to learn more about the fatal “actual event.”

The Opéra Garnier was the Paris Opera at the time of the accident, and it was there that the original “Phantom” story began. French novelist Gaston Leroux (1868-1927) learned the secrets of the Paris Opera on his visits as drama critic. According to Contemporary Authors Online, a web of corridors and stairs linked the building's seventeen stories. Emperor Napoleon III kept private suites well away from the horse stables, wardrobe cellars, and dressing rooms for as many as 500 singers and dancers. An underground lake truly did lie far below, and opera-goers told stories of a murderous backstage ghost. This opulent gloom inspired Leroux's 1910 novel, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra.

The “Palais Garnier” ceased to be known as “the Paris Opera” in 1989, when the Opera Bastille was built as a new home for the institution. The France.com “Paris Opera” Web page said the Neo-Baroque Opera Garnier was the thirteenth building to house the Paris Opera since Louis XIV commissioned the first one in 1669.  According to The Columbia Enyclopedia, the Palais Garnier was built by architect Jean Louis Charles Garnier between 1861 and 1875.  Fodor’s Paris 2005 said the Opéra Garnier was the backdrop of a number of Edgar Degas’ famous ballet paintings.

Monsieur Garnier’s grand staircase, huge stage, and spacious foyers left relatively little seating area for audiences. There are many lesser theaters that can seat more people. The Opera gave composer Claude Debussy the impression (joke intended) of a Turkish bath.

Joel Schumacher, director of the 2004 Phantom movie, didn’t much like the building, either. Jorge Morales ( “The Phantom Menace,” Village Voice review of December 21, 2004  reported that Schumacher called the Opéra Garnier "a huge municipal building with a bureaucratic feel"  and built his own even larger “Opéra Populaire” on a soundstage. Even the film’s chandelier is bigger than the original.

It so happens that the “actual event” of the chandelier was also smaller than the huge crash in the movie. Although the French Web site “Histoire en Ligne” (“History Online”) confirmed that the real Garnier chandelier weighs more than eight tons, the entire fixture did not fall from the ceiling on the evening of May 20, 1896. What did fall was a counterweight that had become detached from the chandelier. It killed one woman and wounded a number of spectators.

Far deadlier had been the fire at the Opéra-Comique on May 25, 1887.  In  his Man-Made Catastrophes: From the Burning of Rome to the Lockerbie Crash, Lee Davis said that after a gaslight set some canvas scenery ablaze, two singers rushed downstage to quell the panic in the audience. Because the stage crew failed to lower the iron fireproof curtain, however, the flames spread fast into the auditorium. 200 people died in their attempts to escape from the auditorium or as they leapt from windows and ledges.  Those who had made it to the roof fell back into the flames when the boards beneath them collapsed.

But to return to the Phantom, he refuses to go away.  Alan Riding (in “Mystery Music Stops Paris Opera ,” New York Times, September 19, 2002)  said that a shrill blast of recorded music interrupted a live performance at the Opéra Garnier. No one could find the perpetrator or tell where the noise had come from.

NOTE: You can read Gaston Leroux’s complete Phantom of the Opera (in English) on the Internet at www.gutenberg.org/etext/175.

SEE ALSO: Quasimodo 101 (The Lowdown on The Hunchback of Notre Dame) for more lugubrious Parisian ambiance at http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/quasimodo-101-lowdown-hunchback-notre-dame.