Gaston Leroux

The Phantom of the Opera Gaston Leroux

Publisher Marketing: The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade. When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between the phenomena ascribed to the "ghost" and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris upper classes; and I soon conceived the idea that this tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question. The events do not date more than thirty years back; and it would not be difficult to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men of the highest respectability, men upon whose word one could absolutely rely, who would remember as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic conditions that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daae, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the Opera on the Rue-Scribe side. But none of those witnesses had until that day thought that there was any reason for connecting the more or less legendary figure of the Opera ghost with that terrible story. Review Citations: Booklist 10/01/2009 pg. 46 (EAN 9781602706798, Library Binding) Hornbook Guide to Children 01/01/2010 pg. 65 (EAN 9781602706798, Library Binding) Wilson Middle/Junior Hi Catalo 01/01/2010 pg. 87 (EAN 9781602706798, Library Binding) Ingram Advance 03/01/2005 pg. 112 (EAN 9781932983135, Paperback) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/2007 pg. 783 (EAN 9780375761133, Paperback) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/2011 pg. 990 (EAN 9780375761133, Paperback) Hornbook Guide to Children 01/01/2006 pg. 62 (EAN 9780394938479, Library Binding) Hornbook Guide to Children 01/01/2006 pg. 62 (EAN 9780394838472, Paperback) Contributor Bio:  LeRoux, Gaston Gaston Leroux was a French journalist, short-story writer, and novelist, and is most famous for his acclaimed novel, The Phantom of the Opera. A student of law, Leroux turned to journalism after spending his inheritance on a lavish lifestyle. Over a decade of work as a court reporter and theatre critic for the L'?cho de Paris served as inspiration for his series of successful detective novels featuring Joseph Rouletabille, an amateur sleuth, and Leroux's contributions to the French detective genre are considered as significant as those of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe. Leroux died in 1927.