Christine Daae and her father Daae

Christine Daae and her father Daae form the foundational relationship of Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, a bond that shapes her identity as a singer, her susceptibility to the Angel of Music, and the emotional core of the novel's tragedy. Daddy Daae, a peasant fiddler from Sweden, is both her first music teacher and the source of the legend that ultimately binds her to Erik. His death, his promise to send the Angel of Music from Heaven, and his burial with his violin at Perros-Guirec anchor Christine's spiritual and artistic life, making her father's memory the lens through which she interprets her own miraculous voice and her captivity.

Identity and Background

Daddy Daae was a peasant who lived in a small market-town not far from Upsala, digging the earth during the week and singing in the choir on Sundays. He was a great musician, perhaps without knowing it, and no fiddler throughout the length and breadth of Scandinavia played as he did. His reputation was widespread, and he was always invited to set the couples dancing at weddings and other festivals. He taught his little daughter the musical alphabet before she knew how to read, and she listened to him in ecstasy or sang to his playing. When Christine was entering upon her sixth year, her mother died, and the father, who cared only for his daughter and his music, sold his patch of ground and went to Upsala in search of fame and fortune, finding nothing but poverty. He returned to the country, wandering from fair to fair, strumming his Scandinavian melodies, with his child, who never left his side.

The Angel of Music and the Promise

The Angel of Music played a part in all Daddy Daae's tales, and he maintained that every great musician, every great artist received a visit from the Angel at least once in his life. Sometimes the Angel leans over their cradle, as happened to Lotte, and that is how there are little prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than men at fifty. Sometimes the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and won't learn their lessons or practise their scales. And sometimes he does not come at all, because the children have a bad heart or a bad conscience. No one ever sees the Angel, but he is heard by those who are meant to hear him. He often comes when they least expect him, when they are sad and disheartened, and their ears suddenly perceive celestial harmonies, a divine voice, which they remember all their lives. Little Christine asked her father if he had heard the Angel of Music, but Daddy Daae shook his head sadly; then his eyes lit up as he said, "You will hear him one day, my child! When I am in Heaven, I will send him to you!" Daddy was beginning to cough at that time.

Life and Plot Trajectory

Professor Valerius heard the father and daughter at Ljimby Fair and took them to Gothenburg, maintaining that the father was the first violinist in the world and that the daughter had the making of a great artist. When Valerius and his wife went to settle in France, they took Daae and Christine with them, and "Mamma" Valerius treated Christine as her daughter. As for Daae, he began to pine away with homesickness, never going out of doors in Paris, but living in a sort of dream which he kept up with his violin. For hours at a time, he remained locked up in his bedroom with his daughter, fiddling and singing, very, very softly. He seemed not to recover his strength until the summer, when the whole family went to stay at Perros-Guirec, in a far-away corner of Brittany, where the sea was of the same color as in his own country. Often he would play his saddest tunes on the beach and pretend that the sea stopped its roaring to listen to them. He induced Mamma Valerius to indulge a queer whim of his: at the time of the "pardons," or Breton pilgrimages, the village festival and dances, he went off with his fiddle, as in the old days, and was allowed to take his daughter with him for a week. They gave the smallest hamlets music to last them for a year and slept at night in a barn, refusing a bed at the inn, lying close together on the straw, as when they were so poor in Sweden. They were very neatly dressed, made no collection, refused the halfpence offered them, and the people around could not understand the conduct of this rustic fiddler who tramped the roads with that pretty child who sang like an angel from Heaven.

Relationships and Conflict

It was during these wanderings that Christine first met Raoul de Chagny, a little boy who was out with his governess and could not tear himself from the little girl whose pure, sweet voice seemed to bind him to her. At the aunt's request, seconded by Professor Valerius, Daae consented to give the young viscount some violin lessons, and in this way Raoul learned to love the same airs that had charmed Christine's childhood. The children delighted in stories, in old Breton legends, and their great treat was in the twilight, when Daae came and sat down by them on the roadside and, in a low voice, told them the legends of the land of the North. It was Daddy Daae who told the story of Little Lotte, who most of all loved, when she went to sleep, to hear the Angel of Music, and who maintained that every great musician received a visit from the Angel. Three years later, Raoul and Christine met again at Perros, and the young man first saw the old man, and then Christine entered, carrying the tea-tray. She flushed at the sight of Raoul, and they talked till the evening, very shyly. When they took leave of each other by the roadside, Raoul, pressing a kiss on Christine's trembling hand, said, "Mademoiselle, I shall never forget you!" and went away regretting his words, for he knew that Christine could not be the wife of the Vicomte de Chagny.

Change and Ending

As for Christine, she tried not to think of him and devoted herself wholly to her art. She made wonderful progress, and those who heard her prophesied that she would be the greatest singer in the world. Meanwhile, the father died; and suddenly she seemed to have lost, with him, her voice, her soul and her genius. She retained just, but only just, enough of this to enter the Conservatoire, where she did not distinguish herself at all, attending the classes without enthusiasm and taking a prize only to please old Mamma Valerius. The anniversary of her father's death drew Christine to Perros, where she wrote to Raoul, saying, "I have not forgotten the little boy who went into the sea to rescue my scarf. I feel that I must write to you to-day, when I am going to Perros, in fulfilment of a sacred duty. To-morrow is the anniversary of the death of my poor father, whom you knew and who was very fond of you. He is buried there, with his violin, in the graveyard of the little church, at the bottom of the slope where we used to play as children, beside the road where, when we were a little bigger, we said good-by for the last time." At Perros, Christine had a mass said for the repose of her father's soul and spent a long time praying in the little church and on the fiddler's tomb. It was in the churchyard, at the stroke of midnight, that Raoul heard the most perfect music, the air of The Resurrection of Lazarus, which old M. Daae used to play to them in his hours of melancholy and of faith, and which Christine attributed to the Angel of Music her father had promised to send her.

Narrative Role and Evaluation

The father-daughter bond is the emotional and spiritual engine of the novel. Daddy Daae's promise to send the Angel of Music from Heaven is what makes Christine believe, with all her heart, that the voice she hears in her dressing-room is a divine gift rather than a human deception. When Erik, the Opera Ghost, first speaks to her, he claims to be the Angel of Music, the voice which she was expecting and which her father had promised her, and Christine, raised on her father's legends, accepts this imposture. Her father's death also explains her vulnerability: she loses her voice, her soul and her genius with him, and it is only through the Angel of Music that she recovers them, making her both a miraculous singer and a prisoner. The Resurrection of Lazarus, played on her father's violin at his grave, becomes the music that lures her into Erik's underground world, and the memory of her father is so powerful that even Raoul, hearing the music, remembers it as the air old M. Daae used to play. In the end, the relationship defines Christine's tragedy: she is a daughter who honors her father's memory by trusting the voice he promised to send, and that trust is what binds her to the monster who loves her.