Erik (The Phantom of the Opera)

Character Background and Biograph

Lon Chaney as Erik in the 1925 film adaptation of the film.

In the original novel, few details are given regarding Erik's past, although there is no shortage of hints and implications throughout the book. Erik himself laments the fact that his mother was horrified by his appearance and that his father, a master mason, never saw him.

It is also revealed that "Erik" was not, in fact, his birth name, but one that was given or found "by accident", as Erik himself says in the novel. In the novel, Leroux sometimes calls him "the man's voice"; Erik also refers to himself as "The Opera Ghost", "The Angel of Music", and attends a masquerade as the Red Death. Most of Erik's history is revealed by a mysterious figure, known through most of the novel as The Persian or the Daroga, who had been a local police chief in Persia and who followed Erik to Paris:) some of the rest is discussed in the novel's epilogue. Erik is born in a small town outside of Rouen, France. Born hideously deformed, he is a "subject of horror" for his family and as a result, he runs away as a young boy and falls in with a band of Gypsies, making his living as an attraction in freak shows, where he is known as "le mort vivant" ("the living dead").

During his time with the tribe, Erik becomes a great illusionist, magician and ventriloquist. His reputation for these skills and his unearthly singing voice spreads quickly, and one day a fur trader mentions him to the Shah of Persia.The Shah orders the Persian to fetch Erik and bring him to the palace.The Shah-in-Shah commissions Erik, who proves himself a gifted architect, to construct an elaborate palace, Mazenderan. The edifice is designed with so many trap doors and secret rooms that not even the slightest whisper could be considered private.

The design itself carries sound to myriad hidden locations, so that one never knew who might be listening. At some point under the Shah's employment, Erik is also a political assassin, using a unique noose referred to as the Punjab Lasso.The Persian dwells on the vague horrors that existed at Mazenderan rather than going in depth into the actual circumstances involved. The Shah, pleased with Erik's work and determined that no one else should have such a palace, orders Erik blinded.

Thinking that Erik could still make another palace even without his eyesight, the Shah orders Erik's execution. It is only by the intervention of the daroga (the Persian) that Erik escapes. Erik then goes to Constantinople and is employed by its ruler, helping build certain edifices in the Yildiz-Kiosk, among other things. However, he has to leave the city for the same reason he left Mazenderan: he knows too much. He also seems to have traveled to Southeast Asia, since he claims to have learned to breathe underwater using a hollow reed from the "Tonkin pirates". By this time Erik is tired of his nomadic life and wants to "live like everybody else". For a time he works as a contractor, building "ordinary houses with ordinary bricks". He eventually bids on a contract to help with the construction of the Palais Garnier, commonly known as the Paris Opéra. During the construction he is able to make a sort of playground for himself within the Opera House, creating trapdoors and secret passageways throughout every inch of the theatre.

He even builds himself a house in the cellars of the Opera where he could live far from man's cruelty. Erik has spent twenty years composing a piece entitled Don Juan Triumphant. In one chapter after he takes Christine to his lair, she asks him to play her a piece from his masterwork. He refuses and says, "I will play you Mozart, if you like, which will only make you weep; but my Don Juan, Christine, burns." Eventually, after she has wrenched off his mask and seen his deformed face, he begins to play it. Christine says that at first it seemed to be "one great awful sob," but then became alert to its nuances and power. Upon its completion, he originally plans to go to his bed (which is a coffin) and "never wake up," but by the final chapters of the novel, (during which Erik kidnapps Christine right from the stage during a performance),

Erik expresses his wish to marry Christine and live a comfortable bourgeois life after his work has been completed. He has stored a massive supply of gunpowder under the Opera, and, should she refuse his offer, plans to detonate it. When she acquiesces to his desires in order to save herself, her lover Raoul (who, aided by the Persian, went looking for Christine and fell into Erik's torture chamber), and the denizens of the Opera, we find out that his part of the bargain was to take the Persian and Raoul above ground. He does so with the Persian, but Raoul was kept "a hostage" and was "locked up comfortably, properly chained" in the dungeon under the opera. When he returns, he finds Christine waiting for him, like "a real living fiancee" and he swore she tilted her forehead toward him, and he kissed it. Then he says he was so happy that he fell at her feet, crying, and she cries with him, calling him "poor, unhappy Erik" and taking his hand.

At this point, he is "just a poor dog ready to die for her" and he returns to her the ring she had lost and said that she was free to go and marry Raoul. Erik frees Raoul and he and Christine leave. But before they do, Erik makes Christine promise that when he dies she will come back and bury him. Then she kisses Erik's forehead. Erik dies three weeks later, but not before he goes to visit the Persian and tells him everything, and promises to send him Erik's dearest possessions: the papers that Christine wrote about everything that had happened with her "Angel of Music" and some things that had belonged to her. Christine keeps her promise and returns to the Opera to bury Erik and place the plain gold band he had given her on his finger. Leroux claims that a skeleton bearing such a ring was later unearthed in the Opera cellars.

According to the Musical and 2004 Film

According to these two sources, Erik was originally an underprivileged child with a knack for magic and illusions. He spent much of his childhood wandering with the travelling circus, being displayed as the "devil's child" to those who attended. However, while performing at the Opera House, a young Madame Giry pities him and takes him in as her own. After this, she hides him in the cellars of the opera house. The film goes into much more depth about this than the musical. However, even so, it is dramatically different (and in many aspects, a simplified version of) biography and background than what has been mentioned.

Erik's Deformity

In the Leroux novel, Erik is described as corpse-like with no nose; sunken eyes and cheeks; yellow, parchment-like skin; and only a few wisps of ink-black hair covering his head. He is often described as "a walking skeleton", and Christine graphically describes his cold hands.

Lon Chaney, Sr.'s characterization of Erik in the silent film (released in 1925) remains closest to the book in content, in that Erik's face resembles a skull with an elongated nose slit and protruding, crooked teeth. Chaney was a master make-up artist and was considered avant garde for creating and applying Erik's facial makeup design himself. It is said he kept it secret until the first day of filming. The result was allegedly so frightening to the ladies of the time, theaters showing the movie were cautioned to keep smelling salts on hand for the women who fainted in shock.

Several movies based on the novel also vary the deformities (or in the case of Dario Argento's film, the lack thereof, where Erik was a normal, handsome man raised by rats). In Universal's 1943 adaptation, a poor musician tries to publish his music, and then wrongly accuses the publisher of trying to steal his music. The Phantom character then murders the publisher by strangulation and tries to retrieve his music, only to have his face burned by having etching acid thrown in his face by the publisher's female assistant. The rock opera Phantom of the Paradise has Winslow (the Erik character) get his head caught in a record-press and Robert Englund's horror-version has him selling his soul to Satan and having his face mutilated as a result (this version also has a gruesome variation on the mask, in which Erik is sewing flesh to his face)

In Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical adaptation (taking a tip from Universal's 1943 spin on the story), only half of Erik's face is deformed (thus the famous half-mask often associated with Erik's appearance.) His show was originally planned to have a full mask and full facial disfigurement, but when the director, Hal Prince, realized that it would make expression onstage very difficult, they halved the mask. The logo featuring a full mask was publicized before the change. The deformity in the musical includes a gash on the right side of his partly balding head with exposed skull tissue, an elongated right nostril, a missing right eyebrow, deformed lips, different coloured eyes, and several red spots that appear to be scabs on the right cheek.

Gerard Butler's less shocking, more romanticized, appearance as Phantom in the 2004 adaptation.

The lyrics in the Phantom's final scene in his lair have sometimes been interpreted to mean that the deformities affect his ability to engage in intercourse since having been questioned by Christine if she had been taken to become "Prey for [his] lust for flesh?" he responds "That fate, which condemns me to wallow in blood/Has also denied me the joys of the flesh." However this has been clarified; the line instead refers to the Phantom's lack of sexual experience as a result of his face.

His ability to engage in intercourse is further demonstrated in the sequel to Lloyd-Webber's show, "Love Never Dies," in which it is revealed that the Phantom and Christine engaged in intercourse the night before her wedding, resulting in her pregnancy. It originally took roughly four hours per performance to put the prosthetics on in the original London productions. On Broadway, it was cut to roughly three. More than one Phantom has described make-up disasters onstage. Michael Crawford recounts a story where he pulled away from the kiss at the end only to see that "[his] lower lip was now hanging off Sarah [Brightman]'s face!". To cover the flub, he pulled her back for another kiss and "took back the lips" and kept that side of his head turned away from the audience. In the 2004 film adaptation Erik's makeup was made to look much less gruesome. Film Critic Roger Ebert commented that he thought Gerard Butler was made to be too good-looking for the film, and that his masks were more of a fashion accessory than an attempt to hide his deformities.

Popular Causes of the Deformity

In modern times, the deformity has been explained in many ways. In the spin-off 1974 edition, Phantom of the Paradise, his face is crushed in a CD press. Other versions relate his facial scarring to more extreme causes. The two most prominent causes are burns and acid.

Variations on the Mask

Erik's face is always hidden (the Dario Argento version is the only edition which excludes any facial disfigurement). While in the original and the 1925 film the mask covers the entire face, there are many different takes on this. For example, the 1974 spin-off features a mask which covers only the upper portion of his face (though it also features metal teeth). However, other versions (most notably the musical) feature only a half-face mask. Moreover, some films feature a more gruesome twist; the most popular seems to involve Erik (or the Erik figure) murdering various people and then removing their face or skin and sewing it to his own. The aforementioned twist is seen in the French film classic, Yeux Sans Las Visage (or, more commonly, Eyes Without a Face).

Skills & Abilities

Throughout his life, Erik had become quite accomplished in many fields of study, which he has used to both astound and even intimidate. Probably the most well known is his knowledge of music and song, which was likely something he either was taught or self-taught, though this likely leans to the latter. He's also known to be an expert tutor, particularly in teaching Christine Daaé in the art of singing opera. As well as both a musician and opera singer, Erik is also well versed in composing much of his music and even performances, such as Don Juan Triumphant. Aside from his artistic genius, Erik is also an accomplished illusionist and ventriloquist, likely something he learned while either in a band of gypsies or in the circus (Depending on which version of the character is in question). He's capable of using such skills to both amaze and intimidate, but also can use it as a means of escape if necessary. He is also well versed in stealth, which allows him to traverse virtually anywhere without being detected, even being able to infiltrate his own performance at the climax.

Erik's fields of study don't stop there, as he's also well versed in swordsmanship, which he was shown to be able to hold his own against Raoul in the 2004 film, despite his opponent besting him in the cemetery before fleeing with Christine. Should his orders not be carried out or he is overlooked by others, Erik is also adept in the art of intimidation, which he was able to easily do during the Masquerade at the opera house in the 2004 film.