Creep or Genius?
Recently, the 25th anniversary special of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera was uploaded to YouTube. Throughout the musical, I couldn’t decide whether I liked the Phantom, Erik- a strange masked man living in the catacombs of the Paris Opera who trained one of the ballet girls to sing.
It shocks Christine when she sees that behind the mask her ‘angel of music’ has a gruesome deformity. Erik confesses his love to her multiple times. He blackmails the Opera’s chief producers to showcase a score he composed with Christine as the lead. He murders a stagehand. He kidnaps Christine and forces her to marry him. The Vicomte de Chagny, Raoul, rescues her and the Phantom disappears.
Throughout the play, Christine is classically endearing and likable; she creates a sense of light to juxtapose the Phantom’s darkness. He is determined to persuade her to join him in his isolation, but he wants her to be a star. The opera’s directors overlooked her. The Phantom discovered her talent and trained her to be a world-famous singer. He composed music and wrote a story, in the literary world, they consider the character a musical genius. However, he was cruel, his deformity was deeper than his face: he preyed on Christine’s naivety; he was obsessed with her, and in his mad mania he murdered and kidnapped; he wanted to possess her. The evidence points to creep, however, Christine while in love with Raoul, had obvious feelings for the Phantom, romantic or not, she was as confused as I. The Phantom viewed her as his muse, the Kiki to his Man Ray.
And after all aren’t masterminds supposed to be a little eccentric?
Perhaps, the Phantom’s actions mimicked how he was treated as a child. While he was referred to as Devil Spawn and a ghost, Christine saw him as an Angel of Music. Maybe his infatuation stemmed from her kindness. She was the only person to see him as a human, to respect him despite his deformity. She may have feared him but she always went back. This is where the debate arises. I may think he’s a creep, but Christine thought he was a genius.
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