We also are privy to the inner workings of the technical side of the Opera House, to the secrets of production that are used to create the imaginary world of the stage.

This panoramic vision of what it takes to stage an opera is mirrored by what is ultimately a panoramic vision of the most grandiose portrayal of all: the role of opera ghost as played by Erik. It is through Erik—a master of creating and maintaining illusions—that the powers of artifice are exemplified. Among the many tricks in Erik’s bag are magic, ventriloquism, skills in the construction of secret and trap doors, and the ability to create elaborate visual illusions (such as those of the torture chamber) and to (over)hear conversations at seemingly impossible distances. Artifice is also underscored in a very deliberate way by the mask that Erik wears, which separates—literally—the reality of his existence (his horrifically mutilated human face) from the perception that he wants to give to others (that of an apparition). The great disparity among the numerous eyewitness accounts of sightings of the ghost—from a walking skeleton, to a headless body, to a blazing skull, to glowing yellow cat’s eyes—speaks both to the natural complicity between artifice and imagination and to the ways in which Erik uses artifice to his advantage, understanding that terror is a more valuable currency than revulsion, and capitalizing upon the fear that he inspires.

Yet Erik, for all of the artifice that surrounds him and with which he protects himself from the world, is truly a gifted artist. Indeed, his uncanny and fantastic talents and abilities pale in comparison to his outright genius as a singer and a composer, and it is precisely as a result of his artistic magnetism that he succeeds in entrancing Christine with his promise of tutelage and glory. This relationship, from its inception, suggests a powerful link between art and suffering. Christine, afflicted since her beloved father’s death by numbing grief and artistic mediocrity, finds the “angel” that she has been waiting for in the mesmerizing voice that beckons her from the walls of her dressing room. Believing that the voice has been sent by her father (as he had promised on his deathbed), she entrusts herself to the voice, only to encounter a suffering of a different sort once she is introduced to the dreadful reality and the limits of its world. Despite this, even after her discovery of the link between her “angel” and the opera ghost and the awakening of her dormant amorous feelings for Raoul, Christine remains captivated by both Erik’s art and his suffering. The intoxicating power of the music that he composes—music that is born, as Christine describes to Raoul, of “‘every emotion, every suffering of which mankind is capable’” (p. 130)—transcends her horror and tempers Christine’s repulsion with an equally strong attraction that allows for not romantic but spiritual and artistic ecstasy.

For Erik, art and suffering have long been inextricably connected. First, as we learn from the Persian’s revelatory narrative near the end of the novel, Erik spent most of his youth traveling in fairs as a freakish attraction, his grotesque physical deformity (he is billed as a “‘living corpse’” (p. 257) and private anguish on exhibit for all to set eyes upon. Over time this spectacle of revulsion leads by its very repetition—despite the doors that open for him as a result of his singularity—to the atrophy of his soul and his capacity for good and to a penchant for gratuitous evil, as witnessed, for example, by the adventures recounted of his time in the employment of the Shah. Hardened slowly and resolutely by the unkind and cruel behavior toward him, Erik, as the Persian comments, develops a profound hatred for humanity and an unquenchable thirst for revenge: “‘He was restrained by no scruples and he employed his extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination, which he had received by way of compensation for his extraordinary ugliness, to prey upon his fellowmen’” (p. 256).

Following Erik’s arrival in Paris several years later and the construction of his home on the edge of the lake in the underground portion of the Opera House (the implausibility of which is conveniently justified by the explanation that he worked as a contractor during the construction of the building), his own artistic creation becomes the outlet for the pent-up desire, frustration, and rage that has withered him. In this way, his artistic soul engages in a deleterious relationship with his human self, thriving on the misery of his condition. The title of the “masterpiece” to which Erik dedicates himself in his solitary, removed world—Don Juan Triumphant—speaks to the disconnect between the reality of his isolated existence and an imagined, unattainable ideal. Yet while Erik is surely as far removed as possible from the physical attributes and infamous sexual prowess of Don Juan, the two share more than first meets the eye. Indeed, both are characterized by a vacuity, and seek to fill their emptiness by continuous pursuit: Don Juan is an obsessive and unscrupulous pursuer of women, and Erik tries to escape the truth of his physical existence by throwing himself into his artistic creation (the narrator notes that he repeatedly shuts himself away for days at a time as he works on his score). And just as Don Juan finds no lasting satisfaction in his conquests, Erik, although he succeeds in creating beautiful, haunting music, continues to be plagued by restlessness and anguish.

In addition to his composition of music, the other form of pursuit in which Erik engages is that of courting Christine Daaé. His promise of training her and making her a brilliant success above all moves him toward attaining her love. From the first times he visits her, he entices Christine by capitalizing on her innocence and naiveté, pretending to be the voice that she has been expecting since childhood. This subtle emotional manipulation turns to outright blackmail when Erik discovers Christine’s romantic feelings for Raoul, and he threatens to withdraw his lessons (and with them her newfound distinction) if she does not return his love. Erik’s obsessive desire to be loved—to be loved for himself, as he often repeats—becomes more and more insistent as the tale of their entwinement unfolds. The twists and surprises of the plot reveal the greater and greater lengths to which Erik goes in order to obtain this love, the stakes of which are so high that it subsequently becomes a requirement for Christine’s own survival.

Elements of Gothic peril and horror—including the red, blood-like ink with which Erik signs his correspondence, madness, coffins, and torture—characterize this forced romance as it progresses toward its unforeseeable resolution. Yet, on a larger level, the romance with Christine is itself secondary for Erik to a more fundamental, urgent desire for normalcy and social acceptance that being privately and publicly loved by her would represent. His plaintive discourse—“‘I’m sick and tired of having a forest and a torture-chamber in my house and of living like a mountebank, in a house with a false bottom! ... I’m tired of it! I want to have a nice, quiet flat, with ordinary doors and windows and a wife inside it, like anybody else! A wife whom I could love and take out on Sundays and keep amused on week-days’” (p.