Christine Daae's triumph at the retirement gala

Christine Daae's triumph at the retirement gala is the pivotal event in Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, the night when the unknown understudy reveals her hidden genius and sings the role of Margarita in Faust, astonishing the audience and setting the entire tragedy in motion. It is the moment that exposes her secret connection to the Angel of Music, ignites Raoul de Chagny's love, and provokes the jealousy of Carlotta and the Opera Ghost, leading directly to the chandelier's fall and the novel's central conflicts.

The Setting and the Performance

The event takes place on the evening when MM. Debienne and Poligny, the retiring managers of the Opera, are giving a last gala performance. The program is a showcase of the era's greatest composers: Gounod conducts the Funeral March of a Marionnette, Reyer his overture to Siguar, Saint Saens the Danse Macabre and a Reverie Orientale, Massenet an unpublished Hungarian march, Guiraud his Carnaval, and Delibes the Valse Lente from Sylvia and the Pizzicati from Coppelia. Mlle. Krauss sings the bolero in the Vespri Siciliani, and Mlle. Denise Bloch the drinking song in Lucrezia Borgia. Yet the real triumph is reserved for Christine Daae, who begins by singing passages from Romeo and Juliet, a work of Gounod not yet transferred to the Opera. Those who hear her say her voice in these passages is seraphic, but this is nothing compared to the superhuman notes she produces in the prison scene and the final trio in Faust, which she sings in place of La Carlotta, who is ill. No one has ever heard or seen anything like it.

The Revelation of the New Margarita

Daae reveals a new Margarita that night, a Margarita of a splendor and radiance hitherto unsuspected. The whole house goes mad, rising to its feet, shouting, cheering, and clapping, while Christine sobs and faints in the arms of her fellow-singers and has to be carried to her dressing-room. A few subscribers, however, protest. Why has so great a treasure been kept from them all that time? Till then, Christine Daae had played a good Siebel to Carlotta's rather too splendidly material Margarita. It had needed Carlotta's incomprehensible and inexcusable absence from this gala night for the little Daae, at a moment's warning, to show all that she could do in a part of the program reserved for the Spanish diva. The subscribers want to know why Debienne and Poligny applied to Daae when Carlotta was taken ill, whether they knew of her hidden genius, and if so, why they kept it hidden. Oddly enough, she is not known to have a professor of singing at that moment; she has often said she means to practise alone for the future. The whole thing is a mystery.

The Effect on Raoul de Chagny

The Comte de Chagny, standing up in his box, listens to all this frenzy and takes part in it by loudly applauding. He turns to his brother Raoul and sees that he is quite pale. "Don't you see," says Raoul, "that the woman's fainting?" The count, noticing Raoul's agitation, understands why his brother has been absent-minded when spoken to and why he always tries to turn every conversation to the subject of the Opera. Raoul tears his gloves without knowing what he is doing, and the two brothers make their way to the stage, where Raoul leads the way, feeling that his heart no longer belongs to him, his face set with passion. They reach Christine's dressing-room, where the doctor of the theater has just arrived. Christine, opening her eyes in Raoul's arms, asks who he is, and Raoul, kneeling on one knee and pressing a fervent kiss on her hand, replies, "I am the little boy who went into the sea to rescue your scarf." Christine, however, does not recognize him, and all three begin to laugh. Raoul turns very red and stands up, insisting he wants to speak to her in private about something very important. Christine, with strange and unexpected energy, asks everyone to leave, saying she feels very restless this evening. Raoul, waiting in the silent solitude, hears a man's voice in the dressing-room saying, "Christine, you must love me!" and Christine's voice, infinitely sad and trembling, replying, "How can you talk like that? When I sing only for you!" This overheard conversation reveals to Raoul the existence of a rival and sets the course of his jealous pursuit.

The Aftermath and Its Significance

The triumph immediately creates a rift between Christine and the established order of the Opera. Carlotta, who had never forgiven Christine for the triumph she achieved when taking her place at a moment's notice, is cured of an incipient attack of bronchitis and a bad fit of sulking against the management, and from that time works with all her might to "smother" her rival. The event also draws the attention of the Opera Ghost, who, in a letter to the new managers, demands that Christine sing the part of Margarita and forbids them from giving her the role, revealing his possessive interest in her. The night's success is thus the catalyst for the jealousy that leads to Carlotta's "co-ack" and the fall of the chandelier, and it is the moment that binds Christine's fate to both Raoul and Erik, making her the object of a struggle that will define the rest of the novel.