zellephantom

{Christine returned on the following day. She returned in triumph. She renewed her extraordinary success of the gala performance. Since the adventure of the "toad," Carlotta had not been able to appear on the stage. The terror of a fresh "co-ack" filled her heart and deprived her of all her power of singing; and the theater that had witnessed her incomprehensible disgrace had become odious to her. She contrived to cancel her contract. Daae was offered the vacant place for the time. She received thunders of applause in the Juive.}

Poor Carlotta- her self-confidence is utterly wrecked due to one small mistake. Maybe, if you're going to cancel your contract and don't have the will to sing, try to find another career that's less ego-driven? You could take up knitting??

The Adventure of the Toad- hey, isn't that one of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories? (Or maybe I'm thinking of the Giant Rat of Sumatra lol)

{The viscount, who, of course, was present, was the only one to suffer on hearing the thousand echoes of this fresh triumph; for Christine still wore her plain gold ring. A distant voice whispered in the young man's ear:

"She is wearing the ring again to-night; and you did not give it to her. She gave her soul again tonight and did not give it to you... If she will not tell you what she has been doing the past two days ... you must go and ask Erik!"}

Daroga (I'm assuming this is the daroga- it would be a weird way to express an inner monologue, and doesn't quite seem like Erik's style), you're not being that helpful.

I mean, she was wearing the ring all throughout the secret engagement (or at least at the very beginning of it), and NOW is when it upsets you?? You might've asked her to take it off earlier, or, you know, ACTUALLY MENTIONED YOUR CONCERNS TO HER.

Also, if she gave her soul away again, how many souls does Christine even have?? Where does she get them??

{Raoul at once threw himself on his knees before her. He swore to her that he would go and he entreated her never again to withhold a single hour of the ideal happiness which she had promised him. She let her tears flow. They kissed like a despairing brother and sister who have been smitten with a common loss and who meet to mourn a dead parent.

Suddenly, she snatched herself from the young man's soft and timid embrace, seemed to listen to something, and, with a quick gesture, pointed to the door. When he was on the threshold, she said, in so low a voice that the viscount guessed rather than heard her words:

"To-morrow, my dear betrothed! And be happy, Raoul: I sang for you to-night!"}

Sweet dramatic boy... (I SAID earlier that he should be on his knees begging her to associate with him, and now he does it! Yay! Character growth!)

Oh, hey, people crying while kissing... Wonder if that'll come up again. (#nospoilers)

Ewww "like brother and sister" GASTON LOUIS ALFRED LEROUX do you *want* me to root for their romance or not??

TAKE THAT DAROGA (or whoever that was)! She WAS singing for him! (I mean, ideally, I want her to sing for herself, but it's a sweet sentiment I guess??)

{But those two days of absence had broken the charm of their delightful make-believe. They looked at each other, in the dressing-room, with their sad eyes, without exchanging a word. Raoul had to restrain himself not to cry out:

"I am jealous! I am jealous! I am jealous!"}

You are overly dramatic! You are overly dramatic! You are overly dramatic!

{Raoul thought that she would propose a stroll in the country, far from that building which he detested as a prison whose jailer he could feel walking within the walls ... the jailer Erik ...}

Maybe YOU detest it, but have you considered that she might not? She does work there, after all.

{And she would drag him up above the clouds, in the magnificent disorder of the grid, where she loved to make him giddy by running in front of him along the frail bridges, among the thousands of ropes fastened to the pulleys, the windlasses, the rollers, in the midst of a regular forest of yards and masts. If he hesitated, she said, with an adorable pout of her lips:

"You, a sailor!"}

Awww cute! (Also, interesting date idea if you aren't incredibly scared of heights like I am.)

{And then they returned to terra firma, that is to say, to some passage that led them to the little girls' dancing-school, where brats between six and ten were practising their steps, in the hope of becoming great dancers one day, "covered with diamonds ..." Meanwhile, Christine gave them sweets instead.}

Not all the children are brats, surely. YAY CANDY AND BEING NICE TO PEOPLE

{She took him to the wardrobe and property-rooms, took him all over her empire, which was artificial, but immense, covering seventeen stories from the ground-floor to the roof and inhabited by an army of subjects. She moved among them like a popular queen, encouraging them in their labors, sitting down in the workshops, giving words of advice to the workmen whose hands hesitated to cut into the rich stuffs that were to clothe heroes. There were inhabitants of that country who practised every trade. There were cobblers, there were goldsmiths. All had learned to know her and to love her, for she always interested herself in all their troubles and all their little hobbies.}

There was a post going around in Phantom circles on tumblr about how Christine is unintentionally becoming the next Opera Ghost, and I would link to it here but I can't find it??

Christine is totally the queen of the Opera House, though. (Queen but isolated and alone, as it doesn't mention her introducing Raoul to anyone she considers a friend- just underlings and co-workers who she goes out of her way to be nice to.)

{She knew unsuspected corners that were secretly occupied by little old couples. She knocked at their door and introduced Raoul to them as a Prince Charming who had asked for her hand; and the two of them, sitting on some worm-eaten "property," would listen to the legends of the Opera, even as, in their childhood, they had listened to the old Breton tales. Those old people remembered nothing outside the Opera. They had lived there for years without number. Past managements had forgotten them; palace revolutions had taken no notice of them; the history of France had run its course unknown to them; and nobody recollected their existence.}

Ohhh childhood callbacks... (How cool would it be to secretly live in an opera house, though? Probably a lot less cool if you can't remember what it's like outside. Also, what does Erik think of these people? Does he secretly have a soft spot for them, recognizing the parallels in their circumstances? Does he merely tolerate them? Does he take an interest in their wellbeing?)

{"The little baggage!" growled the count.}

Weird insult, but okay.

{Raoul, behind the curtain of his hands that veiled his boyish tears, thought only of the letter which he received on his return to Paris, where Christine, fleeing from Perros like a thief in the night, had arrived before him}

Boyish tears? I was under the impression that tears were simply water flowing from one's eyes- I wasn't aware that they were inherently gendered.

{Thenceforth, certain of herself, certain of her friends in the house, certain of her voice and her success, fearing nothing, Carlotta flung herself into her part without restraint of modesty ... She was no longer Margarita, she was Carmen.}

Forgive me for my little knowledge of Opera, but aren't Margarite from Faust and Carmen from.. er, Carmen, two completely different character types?

Also, gentle readers, I have taken the liberty of removing the massive amounts of quotations from Faust in this chapter. It might mean something to someone who is familiar with Faust and could pinpoint where exactly they are at the moment, but I am generally disregarding it.

{The uproar in the house was indescribable. If the thing had happened to any one but Carlotta, she would have been hooted. But everybody knew how perfect an instrument her voice was; and there was no display of anger, but only of horror and dismay, the sort of dismay which men would have felt if they had witnessed the catastrophe that broke the arms of the Venus de Milo...}

Well, I'm glad that the audience likes Carlotta and isn't taking the oppertunity to kick her while she's down. (Even if she might deserve it, given her treatment of Christine.)

{So much so that, after some seconds spent in asking herself if she had really heard that note, that sound, that infernal noise issue from her throat, she tried to persuade herself that it was not so, that she was the victim of an illusion, an illusion of the ear, and not of an act of treachery on the part of her voice....}

How dare you, Carlotta's voice! You treacherous wretch! (Also, it's interesting to note that Carlotta's ego is partially right- her voice is a technically perfect instrument, and the audience recognizes it.)

{Moncharmin and Richard had turned very pale. This extraordinary and inexplicable incident filled them with a dread which was the more mysterious inasmuch as for some little while, they had fallen within the direct influence of the ghost. They had felt his breath. Moncharmin's hair stood on end. Richard wiped the perspiration from his forehead. Yes, the ghost was there, around them, behind them, beside them; they felt his presence without seeing him, they heard his breath, close, close, close to them!}

It's not polite to just stand there and breathe down people's necks without saying anything, Erik. At least give them something ominous to haunt their nightmares! (Or, alternatively, the quacking incident has put the managers so on edge that they're just imagining things.)

{THEY FELT THAT THEY WERE SMARTING UNDER THE GHOST'S ATTACKS.}

WOAH SUDDEN ALL CAPS TO EMPHASIZE THE DRAMA (seriously, Leroux really likes sudden all caps)

{"I feel without alarm ...
I feel without alarm—co-ack!
With its melody enwind me—co-ack!
And all my heart sub—co-ack!"}

That feeling when you get the hiccups.

{And, at last, they distinctly heard his voice in their right ears, the impossible voice, the mouthless voice, saying: "SHE IS SINGING TO-NIGHT TO BRING THE CHANDELIER DOWN!"}

Okay, just because you can't see who's talking doesn't mean he doesn't have a mouth!

{The chandelier, the immense mass of the chandelier was slipping down, coming toward them, at the call of that fiendish voice. Released from its hook, it plunged from the ceiling and came smashing into the middle of the stalls, amid a thousand shouts of terror}

So, is Erik up there with the chandelier throwing his voice, or is he down in Box Five with the manager and somehow remotely crashing the chandelier? For that matter, was Carlotta really quacking, or was that him throwing his voice? And if he messed with her throat spray, then why did it fail at that exact moment and not earlier, while she was being Carmen-esque?

{added Moncharmin. "We shall have the whole press against us! He'll tell the story of the ghost; and everybody will be laughing at our expense! We may as well be dead as ridiculous!"}

Mssr. Moncharmin appears to have a similar outlook to Hermione Granger's "We could be killed- or worse, expelled!"

{About the same time, Carlotta, who had a small house of her own in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, rang for her maid, who brought her letters to her bed. Among them was an anonymous missive, written in red ink, in a hesitating, clumsy hand, which ran:

If you appear to-night, you must be prepared for a great misfortune at the moment when you open your mouth to sing ... a misfortune worse than death.

The letter took away Carlotta's appetite for breakfast. She pushed back her chocolate, sat up in bed and thought hard. It was not the first letter of the kind which she had received, but she never had one couched in such threatening terms.}

The Phantom has messy handwriting- this probably offends Carlotta just as much as the threats. I imagine her having very flowing, elegant handwriting. She also has chocolate for breakfast! Good call. And is not threatened by hate mail! Good for her.

{The truth is that, if there was a cabal, it was led by Carlotta herself against poor Christine, who had no suspicion of it. Carlotta had never forgiven Christine for the triumph which she had achieved when taking her place at a moment's notice. When Carlotta heard of the astounding reception bestowed upon her understudy, she was at once cured of an incipient attack of bronchitis and a bad fit of sulking against the management and lost the slightest inclination to shirk her duties. From that time, she worked with all her might to "smother" her rival, enlisting the services of influential friends to persuade the managers not to give Christine an opportunity for a fresh triumph. ... Lastly, in the theater itself, the celebrated, but heartless and soulless diva made the most scandalous remarks about Christine and tried to cause her endless minor unpleasantnesses.}

That's seriously not cool, Carlotta. Faking sick (I assume?) then sulking because your replacement is *actually* good? And even if she thinks Christine is the Phantom, or else currying favor with the vicomte in order to supplant Carlotta, the extent she goes to ruin Christine's career is not okay. Yet I hesitate to agree with Leroux that she is a 'heartless and soulless diva'. (Especially since I love the headcanon that Carlotta was Erik's former pupil who cared more about securing her fame and becoming technically perfect in her singing than Erik and showing emotions in song.) Flawed, vindictive, and tempermental? Yes. A bully? Yes. A heartless monster? No, especially not when compared to Erik, who might be monstorous but is decidedly not heartless.

{The first thing she saw, when looking out of her window, was a hearse. She was very superstitious; and the hearse and the letter convinced her that she was running the most serious dangers that evening.}

Sorelli is also superstitious, isn't she? I wonder if the two of them get along, or can't stand each other. At least Sorelli cares for her underlings, while Carlotta seems to only care that she *has* them.

{The famous baritone, Carolus Fonta, had hardly finished Doctor Faust's first appeal to the powers of darkness, when M. Firmin Richard, who was sitting in the ghost's own chair, the front chair on the right, leaned over to his partner and asked him chaffingly:

"Well, has the ghost whispered a word in your ear yet?"}

The managers are snarky, as usual.

But the existence of this minor character, famous baritone Carolus Fonta, just makes me wonder why ALW felt the need to invent Piangi for the musical. Why not just keep the name Carolus, change him to a tenor (I think Piangi is a tenor?), and add that he has a thing for Carlotta? He's already, at least from our short look at him, got a soft spot for Christine, so you wouldn't even need to add that. Why Piangi, not Carolus?