Daae's Violin

Daae's Violin is the instrument of Christine Daae's father, a peasant fiddler from Sweden whose music and legends shape Christine's childhood and, after his death, become the medium through which Erik, the Opera Ghost, first entrances her. The violin is buried with Daddy Daae at Perros-Guirec, yet its sound returns at the midnight grave scene, where Erik plays The Resurrection of Lazarus on it, convincing Christine that the Angel of Music has visited her. The instrument thus bridges the living and the dead, the earthly and the supernatural, and serves as the emotional and narrative hinge between Christine's past innocence and her captivity under Erik.

The Fiddler's Legacy

Daddy Daae was a great musician, perhaps without knowing it, and not a 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. After his wife died when Christine was entering her sixth year, 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, while his child, who never left his side, listened to him in ecstasy or sang to his playing. One day, at Ljimby Fair, Professor Valerius heard them 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. As for Daae, he began to pine away with homesickness. He never went out of doors in Paris, but lived 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. Sometimes Mamma Valerius would come and listen behind the door, wipe away a tear and go down-stairs again on tiptoe, sighing for her Scandinavian skies. Daae 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.

The Angel of Music and the Violin's Promise

The violin was inseparable from the legends Daddy Daae told, especially the tale of the Angel of Music, who played a part in all his stories. 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. 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. Little Christine asked her father if he had heard the Angel of Music. But Daddy Daae shook his head sadly; and 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.

Three years later, Raoul and Christine met again at Perros. Professor Valerius was dead, but his widow remained in France with Daddy Daae and his daughter, who continued to play the violin and sing, wrapping in their dream of harmony their kind patroness, who seemed henceforth to live on music alone. The father died; and, suddenly, Christine 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 Midnight Music at Perros Churchyard

On the anniversary of her father's death, Christine went to Perros, in fulfilment of a sacred duty, and wrote to Raoul, reminding him of the little boy who went into the sea to rescue her scarf. She told him that her father was buried there, with his violin, in the graveyard of the little church, at the bottom of the slope where they used to play as children. Raoul followed her and, at midnight, witnessed an extraordinary scene. Christine knelt down by her father's grave, made the sign of the cross and began to pray. At the last stroke of midnight, she lifted her eyes to the sky and stretched out her arms as though in ecstasy. Raoul himself raised his head and everything within him seemed drawn toward the invisible, which was playing the most perfect music. Christine and he knew that music; they had heard it as children. But it had never been executed with such divine art, even by M. Daae. The air was The Resurrection of Lazarus, which old M. Daae used to play to them in his hours of melancholy and of faith. If Christine's Angel had existed, he could not have played better, that night, on the late musician's violin.

When the music stopped, Raoul seemed to hear a noise from the skulls in the heap of bones; it was as though they were chuckling. He then saw a shadow glide along the sacristy wall, caught hold of a corner of its cloak, and the shadow turned round, revealing a terrible death's head which darted a look at him from a pair of scorching eyes. Raoul felt as if he were face to face with Satan, and his courage failed him. This was the first time Raoul encountered Erik, though he did not yet know his name.

The Violin as Erik's Instrument of Deception

Mamma Valerius later revealed to Raoul that Christine had gone to Perros with her good genius, who arranged to meet her down there, in Perros churchyard, at Daae's grave, and promised to play her The Resurrection of Lazarus on her father's violin. This was the means by which Erik, the Opera Ghost, convinced Christine that he was the Angel of Music her father had promised to send her. The violin, buried with Daddy Daae, became the instrument of Erik's deception, linking Christine's sacred memory of her father to the monster who would imprison her. The music that had once charmed her childhood was now used to entrap her, as the voice that played it claimed to be the Angel of Music itself. The violin thus served as the emotional bridge between Christine's innocent past and her terrifying captivity, and its sound at the grave was the first of many enchantments Erik would cast upon her.