Gaston Leroux was inspired to write Phantom of the Opera after Palais Garnier accident

WHEN a counterweight crashed through the roof of a Paris opera house, Gaston Leroux stored the story away to help create the Phantom of the Opera.

French author Gaston Leroux at work in his study in Nice in about 1919.

THERE had long been rumours that a ghost walked the halls of the opera house in Paris, known as the Palais Garnier. Some dismissed it as superstition, but many believe that confirmation came on May 20, 1896, during a performance of the opera Helle, by Étienne-Joseph Floquet. Act one had just finished and the audience had called for an encore from soprano Madame Rose Caron. As she finished her aria a loud noise was heard through the auditorium, followed by
a crash and a cloud of dust.

A fire in the roof of the opera house had melted through a wire holding a counterweight for the chandelier. The weight had crashed through the ceiling injuring several people and killing Madame Chomette, the concierge of a boarding house, who was watching her first opera.

Some newspapers reported that the chandelier itself had crashed to the stage. Gaston Leroux, a journalist working for the newspaper Le Matin, read about the accident and used it, and the rumours of a ghost, as inspiration for a story about a disfigured man who menaces the cast and stage crew of an opera company at the Palais Garnier. Titled Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, it was first serialised in the periodical Le Gaulois in 1909 and as a novel in 1910. It was published in English as The Phantom of the Opera.

Cover of the 1920 French edition of book The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux.

Leroux, who was born 150 years ago tomorrow, was mostly known for his detective fiction, which inspired writers such as Agatha Christie. Yet outside France he is really only known for the Phantom, a story that has inspired plays, films and a hit Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was born on May 6, 1868. His parents were travelling in a coach from Le Mans to Normandy when they had to stop so his mother could be taken to a nearby house to deliver the baby.

His father was a wealthy shipbuilder and Leroux lived a comfortable childhood, with a love of sailing, fishing and swimming. Straight out of school he went to work as a clerk in lawyer’s office, but spent his spare time writing stories and poetry. He was then sent to university to study law, winning awards and prizes and giving every indication that he was headed for a glittering law career.

But when his father died in 1889, leaving him a million francs, Leroux sank into a life of self-indulgence, gambling, going to the theatre and partying so hard he ended up broke after six months.

Lon Chaney starred in the Phantom of the Opera 1925 silent film.

Singers Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage production of Phantom of the Opera in London in 1986.

Faced with the need to work and frustrated by the legal system, Leroux pursued writing, taking jobs as a theatre critic and court reporter. By 1890 he had become a full-time journalist, impressing his editors by using forged credentials to score an interview with a high-profile prisoner awaiting trial.

His expertise in law also saw him reporting on the Dreyfus Affair, when anti-semitic elements in the French army conspired to accuse Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus of espionage, seeing him drummed out of the army and sentenced to life in prison in 1894. Leroux described Dreyfus’s trial as a farce and was one of the many journalists who campaigned to free Dreyfus.

Leroux also became a foreign correspondent travelling the world, including to Africa and Antarctica. He even reported on the 1905 revolution in Russia, although at times using his flair for creative writing to embellish his copy. At the time he could be relied on to boost circulation with his colourful stories.

Rob Guest as The Phantom of the Opera in the 1992 Australian production.

Actors Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum in a scene from the 2004 film The Phantom of the Opera.

But Leroux tired of being at the beck and call of editors, decided to concentrate purely on his forays into fiction. He had been publishing short stories in newspapers for years, so in 1907 he published his first novel, Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room), introducing amateur sleuth journalist Joseph Rouletabille. Inspired partly by his own experiences as a court reporter and Arthur Conan Doyle’s “consulting detective” Sherlock Holmes, it was light on action but struck the right balance of mystery and intellect to appeal to French readers.

He followed this with many other mystery novels featuring Rouletabille but, in between, he wrote other novels, including The Phantom of the Opera.

After several of his works were adapted to film he realised the cinematic potential of his fiction and in 1919 formed a film company with another writer, Arthur Bernede, to make films of his own novels and plays.

In 1922 Leroux gave a copy of Phantom to the head of Universal Pictures, Carl Laemmle, while Laemmle was visiting Paris. It resulted in the 1925 Lon Chaney adaptation, which made Leroux’s name famous outside France and helped him pay off gambling debts.

Some of his other works were also adapted to film in the US, but his detective works, despite winning fans like Christie, were not as popular in the English-speaking world.

Leroux died in Nice in 1927.