Tuesday 20 May 2014

Le Fantôme de l'Opéra – quel ennui!



Most people are aware of the existence of an Andrew Lloyd Webber-composed musical phenomenon called The Phantom of the Opera, and will even recognize the first five notes of the overture. However, few will know that this famous spectacle is based on a little French novel written by Gaston Leroux, published in 1910. I had been familiar with the musical version for quite some time before I took up the novel – the original French edition, to keep up my skills – so naturally, I had some expectations and was interested to see how the stage adaptation compared to its original source.

I hate to say this, but I was incredibly bored most of the time with this book. The 300+ pages seemed to never come to an end, and that wasn't just because French is a little harder for me to read than English or Finnish. I think part of the problem was that, knowing the musical, I knew most of what was going to happen beforehand and so the narration lost part of its suspense.

The setting is, naturally, an opera house in late 19th century Paris, and among the workers and performers the rumours of a mysterious and terrifying "Phantom" figure persist, despite the new managers' efforts to wave it all off as a somewhat annoying product of the collective imagination. Meanwhile, the young and gifted soprano Christine Daaé believes she is taking singing lessons from an "angel of music" sent by her deceased father. However, she finds out that her angel is actually a man, Erik, who suffers from a hideous facial disfigurement and a desperate love for Christine, both of which the ingénue finds quite alarming. Raoul de Chagny, a childhood friend who now wants her love, tries to rescue poor Christine from the frightening mess Erik has made.

It's really a shame that Erik, although he is the titular "Phantom", doesn't get a proper appearance till about halfway through the book – the other two main characters we are given are terribly annoying in my humble opinion. Alright, Christine is very naïve in the musical adaptation too – even the most faithful fans find it more than a bit amusing how easily she follows a mask-wearing mystery man who suddenly appears through her dressing-room mirror – but in this book, she exasperated me more than ever. It seems that she is always pale and trembling and speaks almost exclusively in frightened whispers. Then she thwarts Raoul when he for once does some actual, rational thinking and suggests that they run the heck out of Erik's reach as soon as possible. This is a remarkable effort from Raoul, who isn't much in the habit of being rational in general. When he is not pining after Christine with every brain cell he possesses, he is being fiercely jealous of her and Erik. If he isn't by some chance doing either of these, he is probably bursting into tears for one reason or another.

Then there is a most enigmatic character who is simply called "the Persian". He does not appear in the musical version at all, but in the book he is very important. Like Erik, he doesn't make an appearance till halfway through the book, but then he practically takes over the narration almost till the very end. Also, Raoul would have gotten absolutely nowhere in his attempt to rescue Christine from the Phantom's hideaway if the Persian hadn't offered to help. The Persian seems to share the Phantom's knowledge of the Opera house's catacombs as well as a part of his eventful history. Also, it's him who has to find a way out of the trap that Erik sets them; Raoul has a complete mental breakdown and thinks he's in a forest in Congo when Bad Phantom plays a mirror trick on him. The Persian was a welcome addition to the cast of characters because he was smart and not annoying, unlike most of the other main characters, but I couldn't help but feel that he seemed perhaps a little out of place underneath a Parisian opera house. His connection to Erik is mostly explained, but I still questioned his motives in constantly tailing the man!

Brutal as I am about poor Raoul and Christine, I did like some of the characters in this book. Erik and the Persian certainly offer food for thought, especially the former. As I mentioned before, it takes a long time till the reader actually sees the Phantom, but his presence can be felt on almost every page, and he is truly complex and intriguing to read. I had great fun with the two Opera managers as well, called Messieurs Richard and Moncharmin in the book. Madame Giry was simply brilliant, even though it was at first quite a surprise to find out that she works as an usher instead of a ballet instructor. All in all, I thought the comedic bits in this book were its strongest asset, which is a little ironic when it is supposed to be all about horror and suspense...

Another thing that works very well in Le Fantôme is setting the atmosphere of the great opera house. Whether it was about the hustle and bustle backstage during a performance, or the gathering of gossiping chorus girls, or the maze of underground passages and trapdoors, I felt like I was genuinely there. Gaston Leroux chose a great location for his story and describes it exquisitely, but unfortunately it doesn't entirely make up for the one great problem that I had with this book and which made it incredibly heavy to read.

The real Paris Opera house, just to set the mood!
The pacing. That is the problem. As I mentioned before, it takes almost the entire first half of the book to determine that the "Phantom" really is a man called Erik and that he is also Christine's invisible singing teacher. Probably, the slow development of this conclusion wouldn't have bothered so much if all this had been new to me, but as it wasn't, it made for quite a tedious reading experience – having to turn page after page after page of Raoul and Christine's over-dramatic relationship squabbles when I really wanted to see the Phantom. Well, halfway through the book all the dots are finally connected. Then Erik kidnaps Christine in the middle of a performance, which is quite exciting as it indicates that we are getting near to the intense finale of this passion-filled love triangle...

But... hang on, we are still only a couple of pages over the middle of this book! Is Leroux seriously suggesting that the entire second half is going to be about Raoul looking for Christine? Apparently... yes. If the reader is supposed to be greatly interested in how the Persian babysits a mentally declining Raoul through the underground passages and how they bump into a completely random rat catcher before dropping into Erik's psychedelic mirror room where they sit for three chapters – well, it certainly didn't do the trick for me.

For a non-native speaker who wants to try out a novel in French, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra looks relatively non-threatening with its little more than 300 pages and relatively standard use of the language – the only part where I got a little lost was the detailed descriptions of the trapdoor system under the Opera house, which kind of reminded me of Victor Hugo's devotion to Parisian sewers in Les Misérables. However, depending on how much you take issue with pacing and the character of Raoul de Chagny, you might be in for a longer journey of reading than you expected, wishing you had your own random Persian to take you through it.


Thursday 15 May 2014

Voice of the Week: Linda Eder

How I found out

I found the original Broadway cast recording of Jekyll & Hyde on Spotify, and Eder of course sings Lucy on it and does it so magnificently that I never forgot the sound of her voice. Actually, I found Jekyll & Hyde in a pretty random way – I was looking for Adele's Someone Like You and the search results gave me the song of the same name from the musical, as well as the Adele one.


Commentary

So, Linda Eder is essentially one more brilliantly talented musical performer to admire, armed with a voice that can be both huge enough to fill the space of ten football stadiums, and and so very lyrical that it can make a person just burst into tears. Whichever show tune she decides to cover, it turns up amazing in some way, often with a little unique touch of her own. Her 2008 album The Other Side Of Me moved into a more pop/country direction, but frankly, I don't think that style showcases her voice properly.

Favourite songs

Someone Like You

Vienna

Both of these songs show the power and expressiveness of Eder's voice brilliantly. She has also made a really charming cover of Accidentally In Love by Counting Crows, which I couldn't find in Youtube.


I would listen to this music when...

I want to spend my time trying to figure out how on Earth it is possible for a mortal human being to possess such a voice.

Random lyric sample

If I could
I'd protect you from the sadness in your eyes
Give you courage in a world of compromise
Yes, I would
If I could
I would teach all the things I've never learned
And I'd help you cross the bridges that I've burned
Yes, I would
(If I Could, album The Other Side Of Me)

Stars ★★★★★

Tuesday 6 May 2014

BBC's booklist challenge

It was a while ago that I found this "BBC book list" on Listchallenges.com. It seems that BBC published a list of 100 books that were voted most popular by audiences, and then someone slapped on it the provocative title of "BBC believes you only read six of these". Well, turns out my score is 25 (I bolded the ones I've read). What about you?

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible 
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (Have this in my book shelf but unread so far...)
1984 by George Orwell
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman (Read the first two books and part of the last one)
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Little Women by L.M. Alcott
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Complete works of William Shakespeare (I think I'm about halfway through)
Rebecca by Daphe du Maurier
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Emma by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies by William Golding (Read a few chapters, then got bored)
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Life of Pi by Yann Martel 
Dune by Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
Germinal by Emile Zola
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession by A.S. Byatt
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I just bought this!)
The Folk of the Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Watership Down by Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy
A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo