. . . . . . . . . . "Phantom of the Opera is a production, and this is a general overview of that production."@en . . . "The best book ever, because corpsey love is teh sex and none of us would be here without it. Also it was made into some movie by that Andrew Lloyd Webber guy and the dude who ruined Batman. Notable for giving Emmy Rossum and Gerik to the world and spawning lulz."@en . . . . "225"^^ . . "Artwork: Paul Faris"@en . . . . . . . . "Erik"@en . "Erik was born in a small town outside of Rouen, France, but unfortunately, he was born with a hideous disfigurement. In the novel, he is described as having a corpse-like appearance, 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\" with a cold touch. His mother, unable to bear his appearance, abandons him. His father, a master mason, never even met him. As a boy, Erik runs away 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 death\"). 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 Op\u00E9ra. 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 kidnaps 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 wife\" 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. The Phantom of the Opera was, in fact, only human, but he was extremely clever, a skilled illusionist capable of setting very efficient death traps, and lurking about undetected. He was also a master musician with a magnificent singing voice."@en . "Disfigured Musician"@en . "First Appearance"@en . "Phantom of the Opera is a pinball machine produced by Data East."@en . "Phantom of the Opera"@en . "Erik was born in a small town outside of Rouen, France, but unfortunately, he was born with a hideous disfigurement. In the novel, he is described as having a corpse-like appearance, 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\" with a cold touch."@en . . . "Phantom of the Opera"@en . . . "Created by"@en . "The Phantom of the Opera is a character in the classic novel of the same name by French author Gaston Leroux."@en . "\"A Fright at the Opera\""@en . "Phantom"@en . "The Phantom of the Opera is a musical which has its own Wikia: please click here."@en . . . . "Phantom of the Opera is a 2010-introduced and fiction-only character. He is a phantom and both the father of Operetta and a teacher at Monster High. His class, Haunting Music, is night time-only. The rest of his time he devotes to private lessons and his musical career, as he still performs opera music and owns an independent record label called Music of the Night."@en . "Phantom of the Opera is a production, and this is a general overview of that production."@en . . . . "Rating: *** (out of four stars) It\u2019s a seemingly strange marriage, Joel Schumacher directing a stage to screen musical originally directed by Andrew Lloyd Weber. However, Andrew Lloyd Weber and Joel Schumacher do share a common love for visual spectacle that makes this collaboration an apt one \u2013 and make no mistake, The Phantom of the Opera is indeed a visual feast. Even though it\u2019s marred a little by the delivery of the songs, the film remains more or less faithful to the musical, and for such a long running film (143 minutes) it holds up relatively well."@en . "The Phantom of the Opera is a character in the classic novel of the same name by French author Gaston Leroux."@en . . . . "Original Publisher"@en . . . "Le Fantome de l'Opera in Le Gaulois"@en . . . . "April 1990"@en . "Designers: Joe Kaminkow, Ed Cebula"@en . "Music/Sound: Kyle Johnson"@en . "Real Name"@en . "examplesong"@en . . "Phantom of the opera"@en . . "Phantom of the Opera"@en . . . . . . "Software: Lonnie Ropp"@en . "Rating: *** (out of four stars) It\u2019s a seemingly strange marriage, Joel Schumacher directing a stage to screen musical originally directed by Andrew Lloyd Weber. However, Andrew Lloyd Weber and Joel Schumacher do share a common love for visual spectacle that makes this collaboration an apt one \u2013 and make no mistake, The Phantom of the Opera is indeed a visual feast. Even though it\u2019s marred a little by the delivery of the songs, the film remains more or less faithful to the musical, and for such a long running film (143 minutes) it holds up relatively well. Originally slated to star Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, the current iteration of Phantom stars relative unknowns in the lead roles \u2013 the Phantom is played by Gerard Butler, Christine is played by Emmy Rossum, and Patrick Wilson plays Raoul. Interestingly, all three actors sing their own songs, and relatively capably except for Butler, whose voice is a little too shaky to carry off some of his solos successfully. However, he does look very pretty behind the Phantom\u2019s mask, which helps to gloss over his inadequacies a fair bit. The story of The Phantom of the Opera should be familiar to anyone who has seen the musical, but to make a long story short, it\u2019s basically about how Christine, a young upstart at the opera house, is schooled by the mysterious Phantom, who\u2019s in love with the beautiful ing\u00E9nue. The Phantom creates opportunities for Christine to steal the limelight from resident diva Carlotta (Minnie Driver), but his plans to wed Christine are foiled when her childhood sweetheart, Raoul re-enters her life. Thus ensues a melodramatic tussle between the two men, which of course will end in heartbreak for one. The film starts off brilliantly, with an astounding sequence transplanted from the musical, only better \u2013 as the broken chandelier rises from the ground, the black and white images slowly transition to glorious colour \u2013 the scene ranks as one of the most visually arresting sequences I have seen for quite some time. Nothing else that follows in the film has as much impact, but it does remain consistently good to look at. Another example would be that of the song and dance sequence for the song Masquerade. Already a bigger number in the musical, Joel Schumacher really pulls out all the stops for the segment, and the elaborate costumes coupled with some truly nifty choreography translate to cinematic eye candy. If only the rest of the film held up so well. Although Phantom never bores, there are several occasions where the movie sags a little, especially when many songs are simply variations of the same theme (caused more by the source musical than anything else). The flashback black and white sequences also feel a little superfluous, and the safer denouement that\u2019s written specially for the movie takes away a little of the pathos that was found in the original musical. It\u2019s safe to say that most audiences who enjoyed the original Phantom would enjoy this movie too, but other audience members may find it just a tad uninspiring as a standalone feature film. Final Word: A true visual spectacle, even if the vocals of the leads don\u2019t really measure up to the film\u2019s handsome looks."@en . . . "Gaston Leroux"@en . "Phantom of the Opera is a pinball machine produced by Data East."@en . . . . . . "Andrew Lloyd Webber"@en . "The earliest surviving version of the 1910 novel. [1]So far, there is only one copy up for purhase on amazon.com. Click Here to Purchase."@en . "The best book ever, because corpsey love is teh sex and none of us would be here without it. Also it was made into some movie by that Andrew Lloyd Webber guy and the dude who ruined Batman. Notable for giving Emmy Rossum and Gerik to the world and spawning lulz."@en . "Phantom of the Opera is a 2010-introduced and fiction-only character. He is a phantom and both the father of Operetta and a teacher at Monster High. His class, Haunting Music, is night time-only. The rest of his time he devotes to private lessons and his musical career, as he still performs opera music and owns an independent record label called Music of the Night."@en . . . "The Phantom of the Opera is a musical which has its own Wikia: please click here."@en . . "2750"^^ . . . . "The Phantom of the Opera"@en . . . . "The earliest surviving version of the 1910 novel. [1]So far, there is only one copy up for purhase on amazon.com. Click Here to Purchase."@en . . . . .