Erik, the Phantom of the Opera

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Erik is the title character in The Phantom of the Opera.

Erik's surname is not mentioned in Gaston Leroux's original novel, though later literary, stage and film adaptations have invested him inter alia with the last name 'Muhlheim' (in an unofficial sequel to the Leroux's book The Phantom of Manhattan by Frederick Forsyth), 'Destler' (in the Robert Englund 1980 horror film) and Claudin (in the 1943 Version featuring Claude Rains in the Title Role).

[edit] Erik's personal history

The Leroux novel gives few details about Erik's past, although there is no shortage of hints and implications throughout the book. Erik himself laments the fact that his mother was horrified by his appearance and never allowed his father to see him. It is also revealed that "Erik" was not, in fact, his birth name, but given or found "by accident", as Erik himself tells in the novel.

Most of Erik's history is revealed by a mysterious figure, known through most of the novel as "the Persian" or "Daroga", who had been a local police chief in Persia and who followed Erik to Paris; some of the rest is discussed in the novel's Epilogue. Erik was born in a town outside of Rouen, France. He was born hideously deformed, and was a "subject of horror and terror" for his entire life. He ran away as a boy and fell in with a band of gypsies, making his living as an attraction in freak shows, in which he was known as "le mort vivant (the living death)." During his time with the tribe, Erik became a great illusionist, magician and ventriloquist. His reputation for these skills and for his beautiful singing voice spread quickly, and one day a fur trader mentioned him to the Shah of Persia. The Shah ordered the Persian to fetch Erik and bring him to the palace.

The Shah-in-Shah commissioned Erik, who proved himself a gifted architect, with the task of constructing an elaborate palace. The edifice was designed with so many trap doors and secret rooms that not even the slightest whisper could be considered private. The architecture was arranged for the purpose of carrying sound to a myriad of hidden locations, so that one never knew who might be listening in. At some point under the Shah's employment, Erik was also a royal assassin, using a unique noose referred to as the Punjab Lasso.

The Persian dwells on the vague horrors that existed at Mazenderan rather than going in depth into the actual circumstances involved. The Shah pleased with Erik's work is determined that no one else should have such a palace as his and orders Erik to be blinded. Thinking that Erik could still make another palace even without his eye sight the Shah ordered Erik's execution. It was only by the intervention of the daroga (the Persian) that Erik was able to escape.

Erik then went to Constantinople and was employed by its ruler, helping build certain edifices in the Yildiz-Kiosk, among other things. But he had to leave the city for the same reason he left Mazenderan: he knew too much.

By this time Erik was tired of palace life and wanted to "live like everybody else." For a time he worked as a contractor, building "ordinary houses with ordinary bricks". He eventually bid on a contract to help with the construction of the Palais Garnier, commonly known as the Paris Opera House.

During the construction he was able to make a sort of playground for himself within the Opera House, creating trapdoors and secret passageways throughout every inch of the theatre. He even built himself a house in the cellars of the Opera where he lived, hidden from man's cruelty. We also know that Erik was composing an opera entitled "Don Juan Triumphant." In one chapter after he takes Christine to his lair, she asks him to play for her a piece from his Don Juan. He refuses and says, "I will play you Mozart, if you like, which will only make you weep; but my Don Juan, Christine, burns." He originally planned to go to his bed and "never wake up" upon its completion but by the final chapters of the novel, Erik had expressed his wish to marry Christine after his opera had been completed.

[edit] Variations of Erik's history

Many different versions of Erik's life are told through other adaptations such as films, television shows, books, and musicals. The most famous of the adapted books is the Susan Kay novel, Phantom; the fictional in-depth story of Erik from the time of his birth to the end of his life at the Paris Opera House.

The novel starts on the night of Erik's birth. It is said that Erik's mother gives the task of naming her son to the priest who visits her shortly after the birth. For the most part, Kay's novel stays in context with Leroux's, but she places the highest priority on portraying the romantic aspects of Erik's life. He falls in love twice throughout the novel, but neither of these occasions truly end happily.

Other novels, however, tend to focus more on Erik's life after the initial story. These books are sometimes regarded as nonsense since a main event in Leroux's story is the death of Erik.

Another thing most of the adapted novels focus on is the love between Erik and Christine. Some even go so far as to give them a child. Although Erik and Christine never have intercourse in the original novel by Leroux, some adaptations choose to take liberties with this aspect of the story.

[edit] Erik's deformity

In the Leroux novel, Erik is described as corpse-like with no nose; sunken eyes and cheeks; yellow, parchment-like skin; and only a few wisps of ink-black hair covering his head. He is often described as "a walking skeleton," and Christine graphically describes his hands as the hands of the dead.

The 1920's Lon Chaney version of the film remains closest to the book in content, and in the fact that Erik's face resembles a skull.

In Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical adaptation (taking a tip from Universal's 1943 spin on the story), only half of Erik's face is deformed (thus the famous half-mask often associated with Erik's appearance.) His show was originally planned to have a full mask and full facial disfigurement, but when the director, Hal Prince, realized that it would make expression onstage very difficult, they halved the mask. The logo featuring a full mask was publicized before the change. The actual deformity in the musical includes a gash on the right side of his partly balding head with exposed skull tissue, an elongated right nostril, a missing right eyebrow, deformed lips, and several red spots that appear to be scabs on the right cheek.

Several movies based on the novel also vary the deformities (or in the case of Dario Argento's film, the lack thereof, where Erik was a normal, handsome man raised by rats). A popular theme in film adaptations is that Erik was not born deformed, but rather scarred, whether by acid or flame, usually by someone who stole his music and claimed it to be their own.

In the 2004 adaptation of the musical, his deformity is much more subtle.