The Phantom of the Opera: Chapters 2 & 3

Storytime for Grownups

Faith Moore returns for Season 6 of Storytime for Grownups, diving into Chapters 2 and 3 of Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. She sets a

Key takeaways

• The opera ghost is not a supernatural entity but a real person whose presence is maintained through fear, secrecy, and ritualized access to Box 5.

Main topics

• The Phantom's identity and presence at the Paris Opera House
• The psychological impact of fear on the opera company

Notable quotes

'Is this all? Does he not want anything else?' asked Richard with the greatest coolness.

Conclusion

As Faith concludes Chapter 3, she emphasizes the eerie yet humorous tone of the

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hello, and welcome to Storytime for Grownups. I'm Faith Moore, and this season we're reading The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Each episode, I'll read a few chapters from the book, pausing from time to time to give brief explanations so it's easier to follow along. It's like an audiobook with built-in notes. So brew a pot of tea, find a cozy chair, and settle in. It's storytime! Speaker 1 (0:42) Hello, welcome back. It's funny to think of this as spooky season, because I don't know about where you are, but it's still like very hot where I am. It still very much feels like summer. And believe it or not, my kids only just went back to school. They went back to school on Wednesday, so yesterday. And so... For me, it's still very much kind of like summer, maybe just starting to trend into fall. But the only thing that really does feel like spooky season is this book. So I'm so happy to be reading it with you because it's keeping me on track here because we really are getting into fall. And I love it. I love fall. I love all the seasons. Every time the seasons change, I'm so happy. So I love fall. I love winter. I also love spring and summer. I don't know. I can't pick. But I do feel like this book is just the perfect amount of spooky, creepy, but not scary and just fun that you should have in spooky season. I hate when people like decorate their house with really horrible, like scary Halloween decorations. I feel like that's been happening more and more in my neighborhood lately and I hate it. I want spooky season to be. cozy season. I want to just a little kind of tingle up your spine so that you can kind of snuggle closer under the blankets with the people that you love and pour another little cup of tea out of your teapot that's sitting next to you. That's what I want. That's what I hope we're coming into. And so thank you for being here with me in this. virtual space, our Victorian house that we're in together. And I hope that you are settled into your cozy chair before a lovely roaring fire with your pot of tea steaming next to you, even if it's just in your imagination. So hopefully that's what you're imagining as we keep reading this book together, because that's certainly what I am imagining, even though it's still like 80 degrees where I am. But anyway, here we are. We are back in it, reading The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. I got lots of great emails after the last episode. I'm going to read some to you today. We're going to talk a little bit. I think we have some things we want to clear up a little bit and some ideas that we want to tease out just a bit before we read, and then we will read. Today, we are reading two chapters. We're going to be reading chapter two and chapter three. So last time was the prologue and chapter one, and so now we're going to get to chapters two and three. So before that, though, just all the usual reminders apply today. Please make sure that you are subscribed to the show so you don't miss any episodes. Please tap the five stars if you're enjoying the show. Please leave a positive review in your podcast player. And please tell every single person you know about this show, because maybe somebody will listen and then we'll have more people and the more the merrier. But also you'll have people in your life that you can talk to about this book and all the books that we've done. And I really do. I say this all the time, but I really do believe that reading these books is going to change the world because the more of us talking about them and thinking about them and living in them and existing in them, the better the world is going to be, especially in this world of screens and AI and all kinds of things. So please do spread the word about the show and... If you're interested, please scroll into the show notes. I would love it if you did that. The show notes are just the description of this episode. So right in your podcast player, just scroll down and you'll find a bunch of links there. You'll find a link to the contact page, which is very important. That's how you can get in touch with me and send in your questions and your thoughts, which I really hope you will do. I really mean it. I'm not joking. I want your emails. I can't do the show without them. So that contact link is there. as is the link to our merch store. We have Storytime for Grownups merch that you can pick up. We've got t-shirts and mugs and stickers and all kinds of things, so you can check that out. We also have a link to our online community, which is called The Drawing Room, because we withdraw after the show there and we chat about books. And every month we have a voice chat together, kind of like a group phone call. We call it Tea Time. I will let you know very soon when the September one will be, so if you'd like to join us for that, that link is there. And you can pick up a copy of my new novel, which is coming out in October. It's called Wooing Jane, and it's a romantic comedy. I very much hope that you will check it out. That link is there. And if you happen to be in the Nashville or Franklin, Tennessee area on October 3rd, you can come to the Landmark Booksellers and find me there in person with my brother, Spencer Clavin. There's a link about that as well. So please do check out all the links in the show notes. Okay. Enough of that. Let's get into this episode. So as I said, last time was the prologue in chapter one. Today is going to be chapters two and three. So let's just begin by reminding ourselves what happened in the prologue and chapter one. Then I'll read some of your questions and comments and we'll talk and then we'll keep reading. So here is the recap. Okay, so where we left off, the book begins with a prologue written by the author as if it were true, but of course it isn't. The author says that the opera ghost really existed and he's going to prove it to us. Not only that, it wasn't a ghost, but it was an actual human man. The author believes that proving the existence of the ghost will also explain what happened. in three as yet unsolved mysteries. The kidnapping of Christine Daae, the disappearance of Raoul the Vicomte de Chagny, and the death of Raoul's brother, Count Philippe. The author says that he was able to speak with a man who once knew the opera ghost. This man is called the Persian, and he showed the author letters from Christine Daae, and the author felt he was a trustworthy person. We are told that the Chagny family has encouraged the author to publish his evidence because the current narrative is that Raoul and Philippe killed each other, which the family does not believe. The author says that the final piece of the puzzle was the discovery of a body under the Paris Opera House, which the author says is the phantom's corpse. We are then told that the author will tell us the full story in chronological order, which brings us to the first chapter. This takes place on the night of the retirement of the directors of the Paris Opera House. A bunch of scared ballet girls rush into the dressing room of one of the principal dancers, claiming to have seen the opera ghost. We learn that for the past several months, everyone at the opera has been obsessed with this ghost, who apparently walks around in fancy clothes and has a skull for a head, or sometimes a head of fire. A scene shifter named Joe Joseph Bouquet claims to have seen the ghost and described him as having a death's head. According to one of the dancers, Jam, the chorus master also saw the ghost recently when he was trying to get away from the Persian, who everyone thinks has the evil eye. Another dancer, Meg Giri, reveals that her mother knows the ghost and makes sure that box five in the theater is always kept open for him and hands him his program, but she never sees him. And it's as if no one is there. Eventually, Jean's mother bursts in, saying that Joseph Bouquet is dead. He was found hanging in one of the cellars. His death was ruled a suicide, except that the author tells us that when men arrived to cut Bouquet down, the rope had disappeared. So the author suspects it was actually the ghost. Alright, I'm going to read three comments today. The first one comes from Denise. She says, The next one comes from Rachel Thomas. She says, What a great opener for both the prologue and chapter one. I had to go back and read it. Also, I'm starting to pick up on the humor amongst the girls. Thank you for everything. And the last one comes from Anita Lane. She says, so many French named characters. Can you let us know which are the main characters so we can try to keep them straight? Help! Okay, so yes, we are kind of dropped straight into this quite... foreign, in more ways than one, this quite foreign world of the Paris Opera House. And we're given a lot of information in the prologue and then sort of dropped right into the action in chapter one. And as Anita says, everyone has French names, and so it can be a bit jarring. So the first thing I want to say is don't panic. Seriously, there's not going to be a quiz. There is no deeper meaning here. I mean, we'll get to some themes and things as the chapters progress, but this at its heart. It's really a very straightforward book, so you don't have to be sort of trying to parse everything to look for what it all means or whatever. It means what it says it means. And I promise that you will get used to the names as we go along. LaRue... actually does a really good job, I think, of reminding us who people are. Like he'll say the head scene shifter, Joseph Bouquet, or the little dancer, Jam, or whatever. So that helps. I will also remind you who people are as we go along. If someone like appears after a long absence or something and LaRue doesn't remind us who it is, I will. But also... As you get deeper into the story, you will start to get to know the characters and their names will become more familiar to you. This happens in books you read in English, too, even modern books. You know, you begin a story and maybe the first few times a name gets mentioned, you have to kind of go back and remind yourself of who that was. Like, wait, was that the friend or the roommate or the sister? Who was it? Right. But eventually. As you get to know the different characters, you start to sort it all out, right? The feeling of panic that you might be having now has to do with worrying that because the names are French, you won't be able to remember them or keep them all straight. But you will. It will come in time, the way it does in any book, okay? So just hang on, don't panic, and kind of let it all flow over you and trust that it will all begin to... take a more firmer shape as it goes along. But of course, if there are specific things that you just cannot figure out, please write to me because I'm always happy to explain. That's not my point. My point is that your feeling of like, wait, who is that? That's totally normal. And it happens to you all the time. It happens to you in all books that you read. At least it happens to me in all books that I read. But I think our concern here is that we might be missing something because it is French. But don't worry about that. This is a normal thing that happens when you start a book. Because of that, I'm not going to tell you here who the main characters are going to turn out to be, because that would essentially be a spoiler. But I do think that it makes sense here at the beginning to kind of just take stock of what we're being told. Because as Denise says, the book... begins with this prologue that is written in the first person and it is signed Gaston Leroux, which makes it seem like the prologue, at least, is nonfiction, right? Gaston Leroux is the author of this book, the real author. So the prologue makes it seem like in order to write this book, Leroux, the actual Leroux, did a whole bunch of real research, spoke to a whole bunch of real people, and came to some actual real conclusions, which he is then going to relate to us in. the rest of this book, which implies that the rest of the book is also true. That maybe it's written like a novel with dialogue and descriptions and things, but that it's something that actually happened. But it's not. Okay, let me say that again. It is not. The whole book, including the prologue, is fiction. Gaston Leroux is both the author of The Phantom of the Opera and a character in The Phantom of the Opera. So there is a first-person narrator. in this book, and the name of that first-person narrator is Gaston Leroux. But the actual Gaston Leroux didn't do any of the things that the narrator Gaston Leroux says that he did in the prologue. It's a device, right? It's a fictional device. If you were... with us when we read The Woman in White, the prologue of this book, The Phantom of the Opera, it serves much the same purpose as the beginning of The Woman in White, where Walter Hartwright, remember, he tells us that he's going to present us with all these documents and events that are part of a case that ought to have been heard in a court of law, but for financial reasons, it never was. And we know that that's fiction because Walter Hartwright isn't the author of the book, Wilkie Collins is. So there's no confusion there. But in The Phantom of the Opera, opera Gaston Leroux casts himself. in that role. And he's doing almost exactly the same thing, right? He is telling us that there was a crime, and he gets very specific about what that crime was. Here's what he says. The kidnapping of Christine Daae, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny, and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the opera on the Rue Scribes side. So that is pretty clear, right? A woman named Christine Daae was kidnapped, a man, a member of the French aristocracy, the Vicomte de Chagny, so that means the Viscount of Chagny, right, the place Chagny, he also, he disappeared, and the Viscount's brother, Count Philippe, was found dead on the bank of a lake that exists under the Paris Opera House on the side of the opera house that is near the Rue Scrib, meaning near Scrib Street, okay? So we are being told right up front that there has been a crime, a Man has disappeared, a woman has been kidnapped, and the brother of the man was found dead in a strange place. We're also told what the police think that the explanation was for these disappearances and the death and everything. So LaRue, the narrator, says, here's a quote. He, so he being the judge who ruled on this case, he was bound to conclude in favor of the madness of the Viscount and the