From silent film to Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical, it has captured imaginations with its Gothic glamour, romance, horror, and pathos. Filmed dozens of times, the story of the disfigured genius has been immortalized by Lon Chaney, Claude Rains, Herbert Lom, Charles Dance, Michael Crawford, and Gerard Butler. Built on a foundation of mythology, fairy tales, history, scandal, and social commentary, its themes of hatred and fear, desire and love speak to readers of any era. Gaston Leroux's Gothic novel remains simultaneously one of the most popular horror stories and love stories in world fiction. While the Phantom may be fictitious, his legacy - like that of Sherlock Holmes or Dracula - has made him larger than life. What actually happened in Paris during the winter of 1881? But any haunting ended that night, and the mysterious Phantom disappeared as completely as the soprano and the vicomte. At the time the opera was hounded by rumors of a ghost who lurked in the cellars, claimed box five as his own, and demanded a princely salary from the frustrated managers. The young aristocrat is never seen again, and his brother’s body is found on the shores of an underground lake - drowned. The next morning the boots and top hat of her childhood friend, the Vicomte de Chagny, are found near a secret trap door behind stage. In the winter of 1881, up-and-coming Swedish soprano, Christine Daaé, disappears from the stage of the Opéra Garnier during the finale of "Faust" and is never heard from again.
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