The Phantom of the Opera, newly translated

Lampenfieber kann sich an alles Mögliche knüpfen, allem voran an die Angst, den gelernten Text zu vergessen oder beim Singen die Töne nicht zu treffen. Was allerdings der Sängerin Carlotta widerfährt, der Diva der Pariser Oper, war beim besten Willen nicht vorherzusehen: Als sie auf der Bühne den Mund öffnet, kommen keine Töne aus ihrer Kehle, sondern Kröten – buchstäblich.

Und dennoch hätte man ahnen können, dass irgendetwas passieren würde. Denn Carlotta trat gegen den ausdrücklichen Willen des geheimen Herrschers dieser Oper auf. Das Wesen, das sich irgendwann in dem riesigen Gebäude eingenistet hat wie ein Parasit, stellt klare Forderungen auf und ist gewohnt, sie erfüllt zu sehen – Forderungen wie die nach einer immer für ihn frei zu haltenden bestimmten Loge etwa oder eine jährlich zu zahlende Summe, die das Einkommen der meisten an dieser Oper Beschäftigten weit übersteigt. Werden diese Forderungen nicht erfüllt, dann stürzt das Wesen, das „Phantom“ genannt wird und sich nur selten blicken lässt, das Unternehmen ins Chaos. Etwa, indem es eine unschuldige Frau, die eine andere, dem Phantom hörige Angestellte ersetzen soll, durch einen herabstürzenden Kronleuchter ermordet. Oder indem es der Sängerin Carlotta das Krötenunglück beschert. Dass keiner weiß, wie es das hinbekommen hat, macht die Sache nur noch unheimlicher.

It is a regime of terror that that phantom has set up and which the two new directors of the opera, who were initially quite carefree, also have to acknowledge. However, things become dynamic because the dictator is now also interfering in artistic issues. Instead of Carlotta, he had demanded that Christine Daaé, his declared ward, should sing. However, he shows a different face to the young Swede: He acts as a singing teacher who actually gives her a completely new access to her voice: “She went through the conservatory as a lifeless singing machine. And suddenly she was awakened, as if by the touch of divine intervention.” However, the phantom, which consistently hides its figure, also demands something from Christine in return, making her believe that he is the “Angel of Music”, whose visit to her deceased her father had once announced to her. If Christine ever gets married, he, the angel, will float away and leave her alone. She wants to stick to that – even though she has long since fallen in love with her childhood friend, Viscount Raoul, and he has fallen in love with her.

Colportage? Absolutely, except that the melodramatic structure of Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel “The Phantom of the Opera” corresponds to its subject matter. The Paris Opera is not only the essential setting of the novel; The building, with its many corridors and rooms, stairs and secret rhythms all the way to the underground lake, quickly becomes the actual actor who corresponds to the respective state of mind of the protagonists: the music-obsessed phantom is familiar with every corner and dominates the others simply because Incidentally, much to Christine’s chagrin and to the annoyance of her all too quick-tempered lover – the deeper the two go into the opera building, the more musty the cellar air becomes Their situation becomes more precarious. And vice versa, one of the most beautiful scenes in the novel occurs when Christine and Raoul manage to reach the very top, onto the roof of the opera. Gaston Leroux’s novel, the main work of a prolific journalist, was originally published in serials in the daily newspaper “Le Gaulois”, as were numerous great novels of the nineteenth century.

And like them, “The Phantom of the Opera” is structured into individual deliveries, including cliffhangers, designed to keep the audience hooked until the next episode. Linguistically, the text is also not without breaks, sometimes breathless, which is reflected very well in the new translation by Rainer Moritz, which has now been published by Reclam. It points to a structure that threatens to be lost in popular adaptations on the screen (since 1916) or the stage such as Lloyd-Webber’s version, which premiered in 1986 – the text that the reader holds in his hands is, according to a preface, drawn from the reports of some Eyewitnesses gathered, which the editor in turn supplemented with his own research into what happened a long time ago.

What kind of narrator is this? He stands opposite the Phantom of the Opera, whose identity is revealed to Christine in the course of the novel – and from her, a fundamental betrayal of her singing teacher, is also revealed to his luckier rival Raoul – as a second phantom. And while Erik, the actual name of the opera tyrant, manipulates his surroundings by covering up some things, overhearing others and using them in secret, while his own contours nevertheless become increasingly visible, the narrator of the novel brings things to light and assembles his material but at his own discretion and reproduces scenes like an eyewitness that he could not have witnessed. His claim to sovereignty over the interpretation of events is opposed to that of the phantom. In the end he will literally stand at the skeleton of his adversary, like a hunter in front of the hunted game.

Now Leroux is no Wilkie Collins, the virtuosity with which he juxtaposes a wide variety of perspectives and text forms in order to tell his large-scale novels such as “The Woman in White” or “The Moon Diamond” in a way that both conceals and reveals, is not at the command of his French successor . Leroux has an excellent eye for places and how they can be put into the service of a literary narrative. This is particularly evident at the Opéra Garnier, but also in the Breton province, where, thanks to a few coincidences, Raoul and Christine met as children. The imprint that both receive there is an openness to stories that take place on both sides of the threshold between life and death – in the folkloric stories of Brittany, to which the children listen eagerly, this boundary is particularly permeable. Otherwise, would Christine have seriously believed that an ominous angel of music would come to visit her from the afterlife to make her a great singer? Wouldn’t she have recognized the fallen angel, Lucifer, behind the being who claims this role for himself?

In any case, Raoul, in love, unhappy, quick-tempered and simple, is of no great help to her in all this – Christine will enjoy him as a husband. The fact that she has a hard time deciding between the pretty bore and the ugly musical genius may also have something to do with this. But her story is worth reading. And afterwards you will see giant, winding buildings like the Paris Opera with different eyes.