11 December 2012
Haven’t given much thought to the Phantom of the Opera except that it has been a very long-staying
and still earning play through generations. That was enough to incense me to
investigate what there really is in it.
As you’ve known from the past entries, I could not afford to
view the actual play when it was performed in Manila. But nevertheless, I make
amends. The benefit of being short of budget would be to have a very expansive
imagination. My sister even attests to this, indulging in her fulfilling
self-fantasies that subdues her from her too easily agitated bouts of fused
temper. Even isolation has caused this much, filling oneself with images of
what there could be or of what could happen as practiced by role-playing and a
one-person game play. With a copy of the libretto, it wasn’t difficult to
imagine at all how the play went on. There’s material to start on.
With a little experience with viewing plays, I found room to
improvise with the backdrop and their faces; how Carlotta was and acted and the
new owners Fermin and Andre. I deduce Reyer as the musical director and Giry
would be the theater caretaker/manager. Since I know not much about the
personas needed to run theaters, I conveniently assumed Buquet to be the
backdrop/stage effects runner. He would be in charge of the lights, curtains,
and other effects to make the scenes a human orchestrated deception of truth
portrayal based on ideas.
As Carlotta starts singing in her self-important manner (no
wonder she was referred later on as prima donna), from behind, partly in
shadows, the phantom looms in his dark ensemble, with a full-face white mask
only open at the eye slits and much like Dracula was always shown, covering
himself with his black cape as a bat sheaths itself with a pair of membranous
wings. The alarm which Lefevre addressed Carlotta with sets the mist of terror
associated with the phantom combined with the answer from the startled Buquet
as he replied that he was not paying attention and that if ever anyone was there,
it must be a ghost. The phantom makes his presence known by an unscripted
movement in the stage involving the backdrop and its accessory effects.
Lefevre apparently sold his theater without disclosing the
dilemma involving the phantom. Piangi acts more like a loyal puppy to Carlotta,
building up in her her misplaced air of conceit. Then after Piangi and
Carlotta’s walkout and the message of taxation demanded by the phantom who lost
them their star, Lefevre and Andre are welcomed with having to pay back
tickets. The phantom is very much comfortable in the place, appearing as he
liked, demanding his rights. Even the chance of getting an audience with the
theater manager was easy for him. It was as if Giry was also instructed by the
phantom to suggest that Christine take Carlotta’s place to save them from
having to deal with payoffs.
The power in Christine is her vulnerability. Her
susceptibility allowed her access to the lonesome phantom. He in turn used her
to express his genius unharnessed for she proved pliant to him not only on the
matter of being trained but also for support as she had placed him in a
pedestal as the fulfillment of his father’s words to her, which she deemed her
inheritance. Then she sang there,
proving her worth to relieve Carlotta, a bit hesitant in countenance at first
until she finally owned it without the easy fall into the self-consciousness of
delivery but into a falling into role, detaching the persona from the Christine
she is. Sung with sincerity and self-forgetfulness, as if all that there was
was the emotion of pleading for attention though for her part she was still not
into their being separated. It was lovely and poignant as the lyrics suggest of
simple remembrance in place for the dying embers of love.
With the setting of a theater within a theater, Raoul from
the audience’s seat would remember his childhood friend.
I am trying to decide where to place the famed chandelier.
At the prologue, the auction remark from Raoul was that it was exactly as
Christine described it. That meant the chandelier must be exclusive for the
phantom and his guest in his private holding area.
Where it was entitled Angel of Music, the phantom would be
shown in the dark, his mask glinting white as he whispers his line with
Christine hearing his voice in her head as Meg talks to her. That would be in
the backstage where the two discuss. It is a blur to Christine if the praise
she heard from the phantom was from her head or if she really heard it. Her
affinity to the phantom enables her to sense him around making her turn cold.
It might be paranoia but it might be true too. We don’t know the maze the
phantom has created throughout the theater. He is capable of doing so with his
salary or maybe he did it himself for his convenience and partly to pass time
with both wood-work and indulging in voyeurism. He would always be there,
unseen but seeing everything and being everywhere. Then Meg comforts Christine
for a while before focus is placed on the men as introduction for Raoul’s
meeting up on the Little Lotte Act with Christine. Then he retires offstage to
give Christine time by herself to get dressed.
Left alone again, the phantom speaks to Christine in The
Mirror. There Christine convinces the phantom to show himself but the phantom
answers that Christine’s face in the mirror already reflects how he looks like.
Then the shift is to Christine’s frightened reflection as she looks at the
mirror.
It will not be shown but subtly alluded to that he has set
contraptions from upstage to his place beneath. Even Christine’s descent will
not be featured. And as Music of the Night is performed by the phantom, along
the lines, he will look behind him and usher Christine into his lair where his
chandelier hangs as he croons Christine into submission to his genius music.
In the short exchange between Buquet and Giry in the Magic
Lasso, it was Buquet again who revealed something about the mysterious phantom.
Aside from his hideous appearance behind his mask, Buquet also relates how the
phantom could deftly make a kill as he desires while Giry reprimands Buquet for
his knowing too much and speaking of it, advising him to be on guard at all
times, “Keep
your hand at the level of your eye.” I envision Buquet as a comic relief,
motioning exaggeratedly in horror how dangerous and deformed the phantom is. I
also cannot keep out of mind how the phantom directly corresponds with Giry but
not with anyone else. It must be Giry who helps the phantom cover up his tracks
so he could reside in the theater and demand pay by sending out his mail and
relaying his messages aside from maybe tipping him off on those who have seen
him.
Back to Christine
and the phantom, Christine speaks of her dream about a man in a boat on the
lake. It would appear to her from her strange but existing connivance and
frequent exposure to the phantom which she, in its eeriness, no longer
distinguishes dreams from actual happenings when it involves the phantom. At
first the phantom condemns her in fear that her peeping might lead to her being
reviled of him until later he relaxes and speaks of his soft inner yearnings
for love. He is shown to ease off the mask from his face but before he takes it
off, the lights dim off to darkness. Or instead of darkness in the stage, a
camera might focus on the chandelier overhead.
The act Notes take
place in the theater office where Firmin holds the paper with the report about
Carlotta’s walkout in the front page, motioning to Andre who later on reads
from the mail on the desk. Firmin then takes the next letter, being now on top,
which they both discuss on after determining it as coming from opera ghost.
Enters Raoul looking for Christine and Carlotta coming in after with Piangi
tailing. They fuss about another threatening letter which Carlotta suspected to
come from the owners but actually was from the phantom.
It is all
mashed-up since it seems the phantom spoils plays or rehearsals before
demanding anything but Carlotta never actually admitted that the phantom exists
even if it must be the phantom who serves as both playwright and composer of
the score, earning him his salary. It’s as if the existence of the phantom must
be kept secret. Giry enters to inform them of Christine’s return but keeps
secret where she stays. This is again suspicious. Giry must have known Raoul’s
attentions to Christine would only bring disaster so they keep him off her. He
and Meg successfully prevent Raoul from seeing Christine. It was clear in the
ensuing dialogue that Giry advocates for the phantom as Andre and Firmin both
comically pleads with Carlotta and her echo Piangi to stay. As they appeal to
Carlotta, Raoul keeps thinking of Christine, asking what could be the outcome
of the rambling together with Meg and Giry before another person, a delivery
guy or mailman arrives with something for Christine.
Raoul makes up in
his mind to reject the phantom’s demands after piecing up that the angel of
music which forbids Christine to meet him is the same as the phantom of the
opera who demands favor upon Christine. The three, Fermin, Andre and Carlotta,
continue to suspect Raoul was behind the letters for his acquaintance with and
apparent affectations for Christine.
The next act shows
that Carlotta did give in to the entreaties, and was acting on as part of all
other demands from the phantom being denied. As the phantom speaks to Meg about
the occupation of his box, Christine immediately sees him and speaks out loud
to Carlotta’s dismay. The phantom speaks from nowhere and causes Carlotta to
croak through her lines after her sharp retort at Christine. Curtain was drawn
down and damage was contained by Fermin and Andre as the cast move backstage with
Carlotta rushing out, probably to see a physician. Raoul then approaches
Christine as the audience start passing to the exit.
Christine brings
Raoul out of the stage and down into the mayhem of the audience area, into a
secluded spot where Christine attests that the phantom of the opera is real as
Raoul continues to voice his opinion of the phantom as nothing but a fable that
has gotten too much into Christine’s mind. On the duet, Christine assents to
Raoul’s observation that the phantom has gotten into her mind which though she
agrees to, does not dissolve her resolve that the phantom exists. By the end of
Raoul, I've Been There..., it was revealed
that even there, the phantom has eyes and ears. Then the lovers sing of their
promises and their love with the enraged and disillusioned phantom as witness.
Masquerade is one
of my more favored songs other than Christine’s first song and the phantom’s
Stronger than You Dream It. Masquerade is so vivid, it came to me as Dumbo’s
drunken dream of elephants did. As if there was a black screen before me with
the images they speak of appearing before it, each line producing a single
image repeating itself over and over again in tiles with invisible borders
across the dark space.
Paper faces on
parade; white paper cut-outs of the famed masks of the theater - the sad and
the happy.
Hiding one’s face
behind two hands as a mascot earth with black arms and legs and white 4
fingered hands (much like the appendages were all borrowed from Mickey Mouse.
Please don’t sue me Disney for the unregistered citation. Even that one about
Dumbo) pass by without noticing the hidden one.
Then there again
to those paper faces now replete with singular color with each one being of a
different hue from the other. Each face turns around to see another colored
paper face behind.
From each square
tile, randomly emerges as in a slot machine, in different colors, all that were
described next: kings, queens, mauve, fools, etc. All of the faces later ride a
carousel with their permanent expressions intact even as the carousel starts
running as if in a marathon.
This was followed
by a single image as described. Later the word true, being squeezed before the
screen by an unseen force on the familiar black background now reads as false
as it returns to shape. A curled lip, synchronous swirling of gown edges, again
in tiled arrangement, was flashed out by ace of hearts and clown faces later
shown to be gulped out of view by numerous colored paper faces, probably the
same ones in the carousel. Afterwards, with the images gone, the paper faces
lie on their backs and the background turns to white and a different sound from
that of the previous manic one prevails.
Again, in tiled
formation, come grinning yellow masks replaced by spinning red ones and beige
ones in thick granny’s spectacles. A succession proceeded: masks with burning
eyes, turning heads which all stop, with the middlemost mask looking out round
at the other masks which now surround him in a circle, smiling. These masks
then develop red shadows and start breathing brown. Then the shadows jest the
masks who laugh in turn while the shadows smirk. All this disappeared and there
were leering satyrs followed by peering eyes.
A singular dark
paper mask runs on across the dark background, remaining barely perceptible to
the right as if hiding then keeps still. At this, the entire background flips
from different directions and the once dark screen is now in different colors
as each flipped into a paper face of unique color.
Afterwards, the
merriment is shown to be in the theater’s office where everyone is hushed by
the chilling but modulate manly voice which never fails to be menacing of the
phantom singing Why So Silent.
As a change of
scene, Raoul catches up on Meg with Madame
Giry's Tale/The Fairground. His being an architect then is to account for the
contraptions underneath the opera, his personal voyeurism labyrinth. From there
it was safe for him to view the world and human relations.
Next was shown Christine taking a cab in Journey to the Cemetery followed
by her song for her father before his grave Wishing You were Somehow Here
Again. Then bursts in the inauspicious Wandering Child from the phantom
followed by the Swordfight as they were followed by Raoul nevertheless.
In the office again happens We Have All Been Blind with the Phantom’s
voice booming from afar but it was unknown if he was within earshot or if he
ever heard what was plotted against him.
In the midst of
Don Juan, Piangi for the title role falls dead and the phantom whispers to
Passarino.
The Point of no
Return occurs in the phantom’s private hiding, with the chandelier precariously
hanging overhead. The next scene proves Giry’s connivance to the phantom duly
out of fear of his madness than anything else. Overhearing the pursuer’s voices
in Down Once More/Track Down This
Murderer, at first the phantom strikes a deal with Christine for Raoul’s life,
as Raoul had gone into the right path of the labyrinth that led to them, to
manipulate her into submission but decides against it after seeing Christine’s
anguish finally, directing their escape.
As the angry mob and marching feet grow closer in sound, the chandelier
remains the focus. Then it falls from where it hangs down, crashing loudly and
later beneath it is shown the damaged white mask.
That’s how I imagined it.
The play’s script remains true. For people remain feeling unloved by
their appearances, later transform themselves into something abominable as they
wallow in their ugliness which caused their isolation.
All the phantom wanted was love. He only knew of it from a
distance since he no longer had any hold in having his needs met if not for
mercy or by violence. He was piteous. I cannot blame him from becoming what he
became.
The exposition of the story was fast, simply of 7,602
words. With that number of words they were able to tell a story of an orphan
girl who loved her father and was sheltered by someone else allowing who she
referred to as Angel of Music to dominate her. The phantom who was the angel of
music, taught her and found her a vessel of his genius until she became the
only firm and hopeful relations he had. With that set-up, it was not impossible
for the phantom to accord Christine with love. And with his influence upon her,
of course it was only natural that he would use it to manipulate her. Christine
also had no one else to depend on other than her angel of music who became so
much of who she is. In the end it could be surmised that this bond between
Christine and the phantom was lasting as Raoul, who could safely be deduced as
her husband then, even bought in an auction lot 666, an apt designation, the
chandelier of the forlorn and outcast phantom of the opera.
