It tells the story of the opera in Paris in the 19th century where the young preformer Christine has been given song lessons by a mysterious figure for quite some time before the show starts. As it turns out, the mysterious figure is the opera's notorious phantom who wants to replace the opera's star Carlotta with Christine.
The opera gets new owners and one of them turns out to be Christine's childhood friend Raoul, vicomte de Chagny. They fall in love and a love triangle occurs which more or less turns into a destruction for the opera and more or less everyone working there.
He is an abused child and it is said not even his mother wanted anything to do with him. She only gave him a mask to cover up his deformed face. He was then trapped in a cage and was forced to travel around being shown of to people just because he was defigured. This aspect of him is what I find to be the main theme of the show. What happens to someone who has been abused his whole life?
I know there has been an increasing number of pop-cultural expressions in recent years that says that we always have a choice how to act and this is true to a certain extent. You can always choose to treat people badly. However, as for someone who has been abused his whole life, I do think it is important to actually think of it from another perspective. The phantom has always been mistreated. No one has ever been close to him and no one has probably ever loved him. The society at the time was extremely nasty to people who did not fit into the norms. His only lasting relationships seem to be the one he has with the ballet teacher Madame Giry and Christine. What is also important to know about the Phantom is that he does seem happy to keep a distance towards Christine. Loving her from afar so to speak. Christine also seems to trust him completely, believing he is the angel of music her dead father has promised would come to her. This, I would say, indicates that they have had at least a fairly good relationship up until the point where Raoul shows up.
Raoul at first seems to be a better choise than Phantom. He is confident and handsome. He is rich and has a title. He and Christine also has a history, but one that is further back in history when they were children. This is actually part of the problem I see with their relationship. It is actually explained by Raouls part in the song Think of me and the Swedish translation I would say captures it much better. The original is: "Long ago. It seems so long ago. How young and innocent we were. She may not remember me, but I remember her." The Swedish translation however is: "Vad hon ändrats. Hon är inte mer, den barndoms vän som lekt' med mig. Vi har inte setts på länge. Men nog minns jag dig." ("How she has changed. She is no longer the childhood friend who played with me. We have not seen each other for long, but I do remember you.") This I think is the main problem! They did know each other as children (and probably also had some feelings for each other back then). However, they have grown up now and as our identities change with experience and time, we are never the same people as adults as we were as children. Since there is literally no time for them to form trust and get to know each other (like Christine has with the Phantom), I do think they are more in love with the memory of the child version of each other than of each other.
The second problem I have with Raoul and Christine's relationship is the fact that he neither listens to her and feels himself entitled to decide everything for her. This shows an extreme amount of disrespect and is not a quality that establishes trust in a relationship. This too is very well exemplified by their first meeting in the show. She has just preformed and also seems to have made herself ready for bed when Raoul shows up. She tells her of her mysterious song teacher, but he is not at all interested in what she says. Instead he tells her that she has two minutes to get ready because they will go out. The same goes for when Raoul tells of his plan to capture (and kill) the Phantom during the performance of his Don Juan. She says she will not preform it, probably both because she knows it will not work and because it is obvious she cares for the Phantom. However, Raoul more or less forces her to do so.
The Phantom, on the other hand, does show a great matter more respect for her. As I said above, he is really content watching and loving her from afar. However, as he realises that Raoul is a big threat for Christine's attention, he is triggered to show himself to her. The main problem is that he does not know how to handle other people. This is why it all goes downhill. But the only time he hurts her physically, he also shows remorse afterwards. This is important and why I do feel like the Phantom is a far better partner for Christine than Raoul.
The photo of the programme was taken by myself before the show. The other was borrowed from here.
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