A night with the Phantom

Nannie,” my grandson Nicc said, addressing me, “let’s go see The Phantom of the Opera.” I remembered seeing it many years ago in Hong Kong.  Then I got the last available ticket in the last row of the orchestra. I loved it. I remembered the scene of the boat sailing on a lake. That’s all I remembered.
This time we went the day before the show closed. Trust me to be that irresponsible. I kept forgetting to get us tickets. Finally I got tickets on the sixth row to compensate me for the distance between me and the stage when I saw it in Hong Kong. It was well worth it.
My grandson Nicc, in case you do not know, is a tall, dark and handsome 22-year-old. He remembers that when he was small I would be playing the music of The Phantom of the Opera. He said the opening bars scared the living daylights out of him. When this show started and that music was played I felt him jump a bit in his seat. Laughing I turned and asked, “Are you afraid now?”
“No,” he said. “Just a bit surprised.”
Seeing the Phantom once more told me that I was a romantic and my grandson was my duplicate. The story is so romantic. It’s about a girl, Christine Daae, who loved singing but she was a member of the ballet troupe in an old Parisian opera house that was rumored to have a ghost everyone referred to as The Phantom, who wore a mask that covered half his face. The Phantom was her new singing coach. Now she could sing better than the lead opera singer, some of her cohorts said, but who would have believed her?
Raoul was one of the opera’s spectators and he saw and heard Christine sing. She was his childhood friend and he was taken by the way she had grown up. He fell in love with her. His theme song became the production’s most popular and most romantic song, All I Ask of You.
One of the fascinating things about the Phantom of the Opera is the way the music is structured to mirror the opera’s. Every character has his or her signature song. The Phantom’s song is Music of the Night. Christine Daae has for her themes Think of Me and Angel of Music. There are other songs and other themes that repeat constantly just like in every opera.
The story is basically that the Phantom is in love with Christine and teaches her to sing until she sings excellently. There is a professor-student relationship between them and he fancies her as his bride. But then Raoul comes into the picture and offers her true love and Christine is torn between her passionate professor and her protective lover. Of course the two men are jealous of each other. From this jealousy the drama evolves until in the end the Phantom takes Christine from Raoul and whisks her away to his quarters. He tells her – you either marry me or I will kill Raoul. She loves Raoul and cannot bear to have him killed so she kisses him good-bye. Then she kisses the Phantom with whom, it seems, she has chosen to stay. But just to keep Raoul alive.
At this point the Phantom is totally unmasked and looks really horrible, something I could not appreciate from the last row of the orchestra when I saw this show first. When the Phantom realizes that she is staying with him and is accepting his ugliness he feels despair and decides to let her go with her lover. He releases Raoul from the noose he has hung around his neck and pushes them away.  After they leave the Phantom looks at the audience and sings, “You alone can make my song take flight, it’s over now the music of the night. . .” Then he walks to his chair and covers himself with his cloak. Meg, a friend of Christine’s walks in, and pulls the cloak off hoping to find the Phantom. All she finds is his mask. He is gone forever.
It is beautiful and so romantic. Hours later you find yourself still thinking of the show. What made it so powerful? I kept turning that question around in my head. Finally it came to me. The story is really about choosing between what you have a passion for and taking the risk to pursue it and staying in your safety zone doing the right thing. She wanted to be an outstanding singer. That was her passion. But to do that she would have to give up the standard things that make a woman’s life happy — finding love, being cherished, getting married. She was genuinely torn. In the end her passion released her. She gave up the idea of being an outstanding singer and married Raoul instead but she died ahead of him.
Do you not see all that applying to your own life? I saw it applied to mine. Maybe that’s why I loved The Phantom of the Opera so much.
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