Phantom of the Opera

Author: (French) Gaston Leroux, Yu Jiping, Wu Zeqing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: Gaston Leroux (1868—1927) was born in France and was a highly productive and stylistically diverse writer. Leroux primarily wrote about contemporary court trials and practiced law for a period. After nearly 60 years of writing, he turned to theater criticism and quickly became a playwright. He is most celebrated for his excellent novels that are both thrilling and highly imaginative. At the same time, he was a pioneer in detective fiction. Gaston himself had a passion for exploration and enjoyed venturing into remote regions of Scandinavia and North Africa. In North Africa, he often disguised himself as an Arab to avoid danger. He extended his sensationalist techniques to his own life, firing a pistol into the air after completing each novel, much to the shock of his family and neighbors. The Phantom of the Opera is one of Gaston's most popular works and has been adapted into stage plays and films. The novel was adapted into a silent film 14 years after its publication in 1925. This book primarily depicts the story of Richard and Monsieur Chauvin, who discover the existence of the opera house ghost while preparing to take over as managers of the Paris Opera. The managers treat the ghost as a joke and ignore it. They disregard numerous warnings and fail to meet the ghost's demands. As a result, a series of strange coincidences and misfortunes occur. This sorrowful and mysterious figure lives beneath the opera house, always waiting for an opportunity to strike, and when he does, he is filled with rage and deadly intent. The novel offers astonishing psychological insight into the criminal mind of a psychopath and remains widely popular to this day.