Phantom of The Opera



Erik (better known as The Phantom of the Opera, commonly known as The Phantom) is the main character in the 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l´Opéra) by Gaston Leroux.

He is also the protagonist and antagonist of many film adaptations of the novel, notably the 1925 film starring Lon Chaney, and the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

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 laments the fact that his mother was horrified by his appearance (and says that she gets to abandon him), and that his father, a master bricklayer, never got to know him. It is also revealed that "Erik" was not, in fact, his birth name, but that it was given to him "by accident", as recounted by the character himself in the novel. Leroux sometimes refers to it as "the voice of man", although Erik also refers to himself as "The Phantom of The Opera", "The Angel of Music" or "The Red Death". The history of the character is revealed by a mysterious figure, known in most of the novel as the Persian or Daroga, who had been chief of the local police in Persia, as well as other details are discussed in the epilogue, for example, that his birthplace was in a small town near Rouen, France. Born horribly deformed, he is an "object of horror" to his family and, as a result, escapes as a child, settling with a band of gypsies and leading a life from fair to fair, where he is exposed as an undead ( "Le mort vivant"). During his time with the ethnic group, Erik becomes a great illusionist, magician and ventriloquist. His reputation for these abilities and his unearthly voice causes a fur trader to mention him one day to the Shah of Persia. The Shah of Persia orders Erik to be picked up and taken to his palace. It is there that the boy manages to prove himself to be a talented architect, building him a sumptuous palace called Mazenderan, designed with multiple trap doors and secret rooms. The design of the structure itself carried the sound to thousands of hidden places, so that the conversations that took place there could never become secret from his ruler. Somehow, Erik also ends up proving to be an effective assassin, using a unique lasso called Lasso Punjab. The Shah, satisfied with the work, gives the order that Erik be blinded because he knows the palace too well but, finally, orders that he be assassinated since in this way he would be unable to build another similar structure in another country. Thanks to the intervention of the Daroga, the young man manages to escape and reach Constantinople, where he is employed by his ruler, helping to build buildings in the Yildiz-Kiosk, among other things. However, he also has to leave the city for the same reason that he left Mazenderan. He also appears to have traveled to Southeast Asia, as he claims to have learned to breathe underwater using a hollow rod like the Tonkin pirates.

By then Erik is tired of his nomadic life and wants to "live like everyone else." For a time he works as a contractor, building ordinary houses, but eventually he is hired to help with the construction of the Palais Garnier, commonly known as the Paris Opera. Over the years he creates traps and secret passages in every inch of the building, as well as a house in the basements where he installs himself to be able to live far from the cruelty of the rest of the men. In the novel it is told that he spends twenty years composing his masterpiece, Don Juan Triunfante, which he guards with suspicion and only partially shows Christine, the young woman with whom he falls in love and kidnaps. In the last chapters of the novel, Erik is shown expressing his desire to marry her and adopt a comfortable gentrified life after her work has been completed. She stores a massive supply of gunpowder in barrels below the Opera, in order to detonate them if Christine refuses to accept her proposal, which end up being drowned when accepting it to protect her fiancé Raoul, who is trapped along with the Daroga in Erik's Chamber of Torments, a creepy torture chamber created by himself. Although at first he keeps the young man chained like a hostage, he ends up receiving a kiss on the forehead from his beloved, who sympathizes with his madness and accepts him as he is; at that moment Erik refers to being a "poor dog willing to die for her" and frees them both so they can get married.

Before leaving the Opera forever, Christine promises Erik that when he dies she will return to bury him, which occurs three weeks later. Already visibly ill, Erik visits the Daroga at his home, to tell him everything that happened and to indicate that, when the moment of his death arrives, he will send him some of his most beloved possessions: the letters that Christine had written about everything that happened. it happened to him with "The Angel of Music" and some of his personal belongings. Christine keeps her promise and returns to bury Erik, placing the gold ring he had given her on one of her fingers.