Phantom Thoughts pt. 17

[zellephantom]

I'm skipping chapter 6, since it's very short and I legitimately could not think of anything to say about it. For the curious, the chapter is basically the managers trying to figure out what's going on in Box Five while the Phantom scares them by somehow creating an illusion of statues laughing at them. Also, the managers resolve to sit in Box Five for the next performance of Faust. There was also some slight wordplay with Pandora's box and Box Five, which I highly approve of.

{"He has the chief management of the stable."

"What stable?"

"Why, yours, sir, the stable of the Opera."

"Is there a stable at the Opera? Upon my word, I didn't know. Where is it?"

"In the cellars, on the Rotunda side. It's a very important department; we have twelve horses."}

The new managers have been in charge for HOW LONG and they don't know about an important department and the at least 6 employees that work there??? Also why are horses such a necessary feature in operas that they need TWELVE of them?? Are there just a lot of horse-heavy operas in 19th century France that I just don't know about?

{"These are 'places,'" Mercier interposed, "created and forced upon us by the under-secretary for fine arts. They are filled by protegees of the government and, if I may venture to ..."}

So the GOVERNMENT did this? I'm just picturing government officials saying "Do you know what the opera house needs? HORSES!! At least TWELVE of them! And they need, of course, six stablehands to care for them!" "Simply genius! I shall implement this right away!"

{"Has Cesar been stolen?" cried the acting-manager. "Cesar, the white horse in the Profeta?"

"There are not two Cesars," said the stud-groom dryly. "I was ten years at Franconi's and I have seen plenty of horses in my time. Well, there are not two Cesars. And he's been stolen."}

I know the Phantom didn't leave a note, since there's such a mystery around this, but what if he *did*? Like this:

Dear stablehands,

Henceforth, Cesar is now MY little pony. Make no attempt to see him again.

xoxo the Opera Ghost

Comments

[zellephantom]

I fear I am woefully uneducated in the realm of horses XD Other than that they're beautiful animals and equally enjoyable, challenging, and frustrating to draw.

It's interesting to think of Buquet as someone in charge of so many people with such an important role, given most adaptations (at least, that I've seen) where he's pretty much just a slacker or drunk all the time.

A horse elevator! It probably sounds a lot more whimsical in my head, but for some reason, that phrase is just delightful. 'Bring the horse to the horse elevator!' 'Did that horse get stuck in the horse elevator again?' The phrase almost has a 'cellar door' like musicality to it.

Wow, that was some elaborate stagecraft, and it certainly seems like shows where the main draw was the spectacle or some impressive technical effect are nothing new. (To think, the King Kong musical on Broadway had precedent going back centuries of other productions with spectacle over story! I wonder what those stage machinists back in the 1880s would have thought of a mechanical ape puppet that weighed one ton and was controlled by electronics and ten puppeteers...)

A ballet of sinful nuns rising from the grave is probably the most unusual phrase I've heard all day- well, aside from 'horse elevator' XD

[igenlode]

My knowledge of horses is almost entirely theoretical (I rode one once on an activity holiday when I was about eleven, and spent all my time trying to yank its head up from the grass) ;-)
But I have read quite a lot of books where the characters know quite a lot about horses (including tidbits like 'one must not keep carriage-horses standing in the cold outside the door')...

Poor old Buquet. He doesn't have much of a role even in the book, and of course Lloyd Webber's musical was based on de Mattos (I'm pretty sure there weren't any other English translations around at the time he was working on the project), where he is written off as a mere scene-shifter. Ironically enough Buquet's function in the original seems to have been as an example of a sober, reliable witness whose evidence can be taken seriously!
He is definitely a 'chief' in the French text, though -- and actually, even in the musical he is described as 'chief of the flies', i.e. in authority over the men who do the actual hauling up and down of all the painted backdrops and heavy scenery flats. It's just that owing to practical restrictions he is the *only* one of the stage-hands we get to see.
(In the 2004 movie we do see him working and directing other men up above, just before his murder.)

You're right, "horse elevator" does sound a bit 'selador'...!

it certainly seems like shows where the main draw was the spectacle or some impressive technical effect are nothing new.
They go back at least as far as "The Tempest", which Shakespeare wrote to show off the new 'storm at sea' effects and elaborate scene changes for King James ;-)

A ballet of sinful nuns rising from the grave is probably the most unusual phrase I've heard all day
Apparently it was considered gratuitously shocking, and a big audience draw that didn't have much to do with the main plot -- some other things never change, either ;-p