Le Fantôme de l’Opéra

A court reporter from 1890, Gaston Leroux drew on these years of journalism for the material of his greatest successes. Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera) is one of his most famous novels, inspired by real events that took place at the Palais Garnier. Leroux created his mysterious character, who passes himself off as a ghost and extends his domain into the depths beneath the vast Paris opera house.

A magnificent and rare copy in the publisher’s boards, printed in a small number of copies alongside the ordinary issue, which appeared in wrappers.

It belongs to the first printing, identifiable by the misprint on p. 400, “fatal rocher” for “fatal nocher”: this error was corrected as early as the second edition and appears only in the first edition.

The novel first appeared as a serial in Le Gaulois, then in book form from Pierre Lafitte in March 1910. In writing it, Leroux drew on rumors that had circulated in Paris during the second half of the nineteenth century concerning supposed mysteries emanating from the underground labyrinth of the Palais Garnier. It is also possible that Leroux, in depicting the Phantom threatening to blow up the auditorium, was alluding to famous and dramatic fires that haunted theater owners because of the use of candles and the flammability of painted canvas sets (the Bazar de la Charité disaster of 1897, the fire at the Opéra-Comique in 1887, and the fires at the Opéra Le Peletier in 1873 and in 1861 and 1862, in which a dancer’s clothing caught fire; she later died of her injuries).

Suffused with the fantastic, this title has become one of the great classics of detective fiction and a source of inspiration for theater, musical comedy, ballet and film, from its first film adaptation in 1925 to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s celebrated 1986 musical.

Perfect condition.
Extremely rare.