The Phantom of the Opera: Chapters 8 & 9

Storytime for Grownups

In this episode of Storytime for Grownups, Faith Moore reads chapters 8 and 9 of Gaston Leroux's 'The Phantom of the Opera'. The narrative f

Key takeaways

• The choice of the opera 'Faust' is likely intentional to parallel themes of temptation and the devil.
• Raoul experiences intense emotional turmoil after seeing Christine in a carriage with a mysterious companion.

Main topics

• The Phantom of the Opera analysis
• Themes of Faustian bargains

Notable quotes

Fate links thee to me forever and a day.

Conclusion

The episode deepens the mystery of the Phantom's identity while height

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! you Speaker 1 (0:42) Hello, welcome back. I'm sorry about the quality of my voice right now. I'm very scratchy. I've been fighting a cold, fighting a scratchy throat, and so I'm sorry that my voice sounds a little weird. It's definitely an excuse to drink more tea, so I'm totally on board with that, but I'm hoping that in the next couple of days this will all clear up. The chapter is not scratchy. I recorded that before I got sick, so you only have to listen to this. weird voice for the intro part of this episode. Hopefully things will get better instead of worse. If they get worse and I completely lose my voice, which has happened to me before, I have this pre-recorded message that I've already made that I'll put at the front of the episode. And so then you'll know that that's what's happened. I won't be able to do the intro, but you will get the chapters because the chapters are recorded in advance. So that's what will happen. But hopefully that is not what is going to happen. I'm doing my best to rest my voice and Get back to normal, especially because I am so excited to be talking to you guys in person, some of you, in Nashville, Franklin, Tennessee on October 3rd. And I definitely need my voice for that. So fingers crossed that... I'm on the mend, and if not, you'll just get that message, and I'll be resting up ready to meet you, those of you who are coming. I've gotten so many emails from people saying that they're coming to Franklin to the Landmark Bookstore to see me and my brother, Spencer Claven, to talk about Wooing Jane, my new novel, so I'm so excited about that. Since we're talking about that, if you'd like to come, there's a link in the show notes for more information about that. If you can't come, but you would like to pick up a copy of Wooing Jane, my new romantic comedy, you can do that. via the other link in the show notes, which just takes you to the Amazon page. You can pre-order. It comes out very, very soon. It comes out on October 2nd. So that's all in the show notes if you're interested. Since we're talking about reminders, just another reminder that Tea Time is coming up. It is Wednesday, September 30th at 8 p.m. Eastern. That happens over in our online community, which is called The Drawing Room. Again, there are links in the show notes for all of these things. You can scroll down, basically just wherever you're listening to this podcast, scroll down and you will find all kinds of links and things that might be of interest to you. One of them being the link to The Drawing Room. If you're not yet a member and you'd like to join us for tea time, which is like a voice chat, I can hear you, you can hear me. You don't have to talk, you can just listen. But we chat about the book, I answer your questions. We have a lovely time. It's always great. So if you'd like to join and you're not yet a member, you can find that link in the show notes. You have to be Landed Gentry, which is the name of the membership tier that you have to be to join Tea Time. So if you are currently a house guest, you can also click that link to change your membership. And I really hope that you will join me. If you're already a member of The Drawing Room, please feel free to drop questions in the chat in one of the channels. before tea time so I can make sure that we get to those. But you can also just ask me when you get there. So hopefully you will join us. I always love chatting with my old friends and I'm always super excited to make some new friends. So hopefully you will join us on the 30th at 8 p.m. Eastern. Other than that... All the usual things. Please tap the five stars. Please leave a positive review. Please tell all your friends about Storytime for Grownups. And let's get more people listening to and reading classic books and talking about them because I really, truly do believe that that will change the world for the better. So join in. Do that. Share the show. All right. Today, we are going to be reading two chapters. We're going to read chapters eight and nine. Last time we read chapter seven. So let's get into this episode. Let's first remind ourselves of what happened last time. Then I have some great comments I would like to read. We'll chat for a bit, and then we'll get into the chapters. So here is the recap. Okay, so where we left off, on the morning before the opera managers plan to watch the show from box five, they get another letter from the opera ghost saying that if they don't do what he asks, the opera house will have a curse on it. He asked that they leave his box vacant, that they rehire Madame Giry, and that Christine sings the main role in that evening's performance. Just then, the stablemaster comes in and says that one of his horses has been stolen by the opera ghost. After that comes in Madame Giry, and Richard is so annoyed with everyone that he physically kicks her out of the office. At about the same time, Carlotta, the main singer of the opera, is at her house when she receives an anonymous note in red ink telling her not to perform that evening. Carlotta thinks this is orchestrated by Christine, whom she's very jealous of, and she calls all her friends and tells them to come to the opera to support her. Montcharmain and Richard attend the opera from box five, and at first they don't notice that anything is wrong. All of Carlotta's friends keep looking around for whatever Christine has planned, but since she hasn't planned anything, nothing happens. Christine comes out as a more minor character and starts singing, but when she sees Raoul in the audience, her singing gets much worse. Raoul is crying because he got a note from her telling him never to come and see her again because her life depended on it. Raoul's brother is angry because he asked to see Christine and she refused, which was very rude because he's a member of the aristocracy and a patron of the opera. Carlotta comes out and begins singing, and suddenly she starts croaking like a toad. The managers are horrified and suddenly remember what the ghost said about a curse. Carlotta tries to keep singing, but it just keeps sounding like a toad. Eventually, the managers hear a voice in their ear saying that she is singing to bring the chandelier down. And, in fact, the chandelier falls, injuring several people and killing one. Alright, I'm going to read three comments today. The first one comes from Paula Fernandez. She says, Oh my goodness, I was not expecting the ending of Chapter 7 with the chandelier crashing down and killing Madame Giry's prospective replacement. LaRue has definitely hooked me. I am definitely dreading the outcomes of the three main characters. The next one comes from Zarin Patton. She says, The opera ghost is even creepier than I thought. And yes, the knowledge that he really is a man and not a ghost adds to this creepiness, as somehow he's pretending to be her angel and spying on Christine so much that he knows where she goes when she leaves his domain and follows her like an obsessive stalker. And the last one comes from Allison Neely. She says, I'm curious what your thoughts are about the fact that the opera being performed in the book is Faust. It seems to me that there are some parallels between the namesake Faustian bargain of that opera and the angel of music or the devil-looking opera ghost. Leroux could have picked any number of operas to be playing in the backdrop of the novel, but he picked Faust. That can't be a coincidence. Okay, so... After that little jaunt that we had to Peros Quirec in the last chapter, now we are right back in the world of the opera house, which means that we're right back in this world of comedy and drama all mixed together. Chapter seven is absolutely hilarious in parts and also really pretty scary and serious in parts. And we're starting to build a little bit more of a picture of I guess what we're dealing with with the opera ghost. There's still a lot of mystery, a lot that's confusing. It's still hard to get a handle on him as a kind of as a person, but we're learning more and more what he's capable of and kind of how he operates. Well, not exactly how. We don't know how he does what he does, but we're getting a sense of the kinds of things that he does and maybe a little bit more of his personality. Although I would say there's still a lot about his personality that we don't know. Obviously, the big event of chapter seven, as Paula says, is the chandelier falling because that actually kills someone, which is not really funny at all. But it's also what happens to Carlotta, this toad sound that she makes when she's trying to sing. And that is funny. And there's a way in which we're getting this sense that the ghost is sort of all powerful. He's at the opera house. but he's also in a little town in Brittany. He's sending chandeliers down on people's heads, but he's also in box five talking to people when they can't see him. I mean, how was he in box five and making the chandelier fall? That's impossible. Was it the ghost that made the chandelier fall? Or was he just commenting that it was falling? We don't know. And... How? I mean, seriously, how did he cause Carlotta to croak like a toad? I mean, come on. He's inside of her throat somehow? Is there a poison that causes people to croak? I've never heard of that. So there's a way in which the ghost is at least presenting the image of being everywhere at once and capable of absolutely anything. But we have been told that he's a man, which makes it so much creepier. I mean, how can a man do these things? Is it gonna turn out that he's a man but he has supernatural powers? Is that where we're going? Or is there a totally normal explanation for all of this? Not to mention the fact that a lot of what's going on seems to center around Christine Daae. And as Zarin says, the ghost is starting to seem like some sort of obsessive stalker or something. follows her to Perosquirec. He comes back to the opera house when she does. He does this whole thing to Carlotta because he wanted Christine to sing the lead role in the opera instead of her. So this ghost, who's really a man, seems to have kind of unlimited power over the opera house, and he's obsessed for some reason with Christine. And Christine, as we discussed last time, she's kind of the emotional heart of the book, or her relationship with Raoul is the emotional heart. It gives us something emotional to hang on to. So the fact that the ghost seems kind of overly fixated on her raises the stakes even higher. Way back when we first met the ghost and he first started sending letters to the managers, we talked about the way in which he seemed sort of like a petulant child. I mean, he was urbane, he was nonchalant, but underneath that, he was kind of like, give me what I want or I'll have a temper tantrum or something. And I think we can see that quality about him again in chapter seven. There's a kind of melodrama to him that feels sort of out of place, sort of over the top. He says, So it is to be war between us. I mean, who says that? And then later he says, if you refuse, you will give Faust tonight in a house with a curse upon it. Take my advice and be warned in time. So again, what is he? Some sort of like... comic book villain. It's a little ridiculous. And it's especially ridiculous when put side by side with the rest of what he wants to convey, which are these really kind of practical and detail-oriented instructions for how he wants to be paid. He says, let me know by a letter handed to Madame Giry, who will see that it reaches me, that you accept, as your predecessors did, the conditions in my memorandum book relating to my monthly allowance. I will inform you later how you are to pay it to me. but also like, mwahaha or whatever. I mean, who is this guy? Is he a ghost who talks about curses and wars? Or is he a man who writes letters to explain how to pay his salary? I mean, he seems to be both. And there's a way in which I think we're meant to question whether it's Richard and Montcharmain running the opera house or whether it's the ghost. I mean, first we have this thing with the horse, Cesar, where the ghost seems to have stolen a horse from the opera stables and the managers didn't even know that they had a stable. But then there's this whole thing with Carlotta. The ghost has asked that Carlotta not sing the lead female role in Faust. He wants Christine to sing it. The managers are like, you're not in charge here. We are. And they give the role to Carlotta. The ghost. In another one of his dramatic moods, apparently, he sends a letter to Carlotta, which says, if you appear tonight, you must be prepared for a great misfortune at the moment when you