Gaston Leroux's The Phantom Of The Opera

When you think “The Phantom of the Opera,” you think a brilliant musical, on Broadway but the story begins way before then. The well-loved story went through many different stages before it became a musical. Shall we look at the various ways this timeless tale has been told over the years? It first was a novel by Gaston Leroux. In 1909, the complete “Le Fantôme de l’Opéra” was published as a book. Though the book did not sell very well. Leroux said he was inspired to write the novel after a trip to the Opera house in Paris. While wandering its lower floors where he found a wondrous lake below some iron grilles in the floor, also he remembered an accident that happened when one of the chandelier’s counterweights fell on the audience. Which

Laemmle confessed how delighted he’d been with the Place de l’Opéra opera house, and with that interest Leroux gave Laemmle a copy of his book. Laemmle stayed awake all night just to finish the book and then intended to turn it into a film no matter what. In 1925, he did just that, Universal Studios produced a silent film of Leroux’s “Phantom” starring Lon Chaney, which did relatively good. In 1924, they even built a replica of the Opera House in Paris as their “background” on a Hollywood staged to film the movie. On April 26, 1925, the movie premiered in San Francisco. In 1930, dialogue and sound were added for the first time. In 1945 and 1962, two more films were produced neither as successful as the movie in 1925. May 1984 is when Andrew Lloyd Webber took the interest in The Phantom of the Opera. He read a review about a performance of the Phantom of the Opera performed by The Theatre Royal in Stratford and calls Cameron Mackintosh about the idea to turn it into a musical. In early 1985 he bought an old copy of the original story by Leroux from a bookstore. Inspiring him to create a romantic music score for his wife. Starting the journey of creating one of the most well-known