The farewell gala performance

The farewell gala performance, given on the evening when MM. Debienne and Poligny retired as joint managers of the Paris Opera House, is the novel's originating event, the night on which the hidden genius of Christine Daae is first revealed to the world and the Opera Ghost makes his first public appearance. It is the occasion for the discovery of Joseph Buquet's body, the first stirrings of Raoul de Chagny's love and jealousy, and the moment when the retiring managers hand over the Opera to Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin, along with the ghost's mysterious demands. This single evening concentrates the novel's central tensions: the emergence of Christine's supernatural voice, the shadow of the ghost, and the beginning of the tragic entanglement between Christine, Raoul, and Erik.

The Setting and the Performance

The gala was held to mark the retirement of MM. Debienne and Poligny, who had determined to "die game," as the narrator puts it, and the program was a showcase of the era's greatest composers. Gounod conducted his 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of a Marionnette; Reyer his overture to Siguar; Saint Saens the Danse Macabre and a Reverie Orientale; Massenet an unpublished Hungarian march; Guiraud his Carnaval; and Delibes the Valse Lente from Sylvia and the Pizzicati from Coppelia.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 sang the bolero in the Vespri Siciliani, and Mlle. Denise Bloch the drinking song in Lucrezia Borgia. But the real triumph was reserved for Christine Daae, who had begun by singing a few passages from Romeo and Juliet, a work of Gounod's that had not yet been transferred to the Opera. Those who heard her said her voice in these passages was seraphic, but this was nothing to the superhuman notes she gave forth in the prison scene and the final trio in Faust, which she sang in the place of La Carlotta, who was ill. Daae revealed a new Margarita that night, a Margarita of a splendor and radiance hitherto unsuspected. The whole house went mad, rising to its feet, shouting, cheering, clapping, while Christine sobbed and fainted in the arms of her fellow-singers and had to be carried to her dressing-room. A few subscribers protested, wondering why so great a treasure had been kept from them, and why Debienne and Poligny had applied to Daae when Carlotta was taken ill. The mystery was compounded by the fact that she was not known to have a professor of singing at that moment, having often said she meant to practise alone for the future.

The Ghost's First Appearance and the Death of Joseph Buquet

The gala evening was also marked by the ghost's first public manifestation. In the foyer of the ballet, during the farewell ceremony, little Jammes suddenly yelled "The Opera ghost!" in a tone of unspeakable terror, pointing to a face so pallid, lugubrious, and ugly, with two such deep black cavities under the straddling eyebrows, that the death's head in question immediately scored a huge success. The ghost slipped through the crowd and vanished, but later, at the managers' supper in the great lobby, he appeared again, sitting at the end of the table, neither eating nor drinking, and spoke to announce the death of Joseph Buquet, the chief scene-shifter, who had been found hanging in the third cellar between a farm-house and a scene from the Roi de Lahore. The announcement threw the retiring managers into a state of agitation, leading them to confide in their successors the story of the ghost and the memorandum-book with its red-ink clauses demanding a monthly allowance of twenty thousand francs and the reservation of Box Five. Earlier that evening, the ballet-girls had already been terrified by the news of Buquet's death, which little Giry blurted out as "It's the ghost!" before correcting herself. The body was discovered hanging in the third-floor cellar, and the inquest returned a verdict of "natural suicide," though the rope had mysteriously disappeared by the time the managers went to cut him down.

Raoul's Discovery and the Man's Voice

The gala night was also the occasion for Raoul de Chagny's first real encounter with Christine Daae since childhood. Raoul, who had been watching from his brother's box, saw Christine faint and rushed to her dressing-room, where he knelt and reminded her that he was "the little boy who went into the sea to rescue your scarf." Christine, however, did not recognize him, and after the doctor and the maid left, Raoul, waiting outside, heard a man's voice inside the dressing-room saying, "Christine, you must love me!" and Christine's reply, "How can you talk like that? When I sing only for you!" The voice continued, "Your soul is a beautiful thing, child, and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight." Raoul, hearing this, felt both love and hatred for the first time, and when Christine left alone, he entered the dark room to find no one there. This moment, overheard behind the door, becomes the seed of Raoul's jealousy and the central mystery of the novel, leading him to pursue the identity of the voice, which he later learns is Erik, the Opera Ghost.

The Aftermath and Significance

The farewell gala performance thus serves as the novel's threshold, the point at which the ordinary world of the Opera is disrupted by the revelation of Christine's genius and the ghost's presence. It is the night that Christine Daae, who had previously sung like a "crock," as Meg Giry put it, first astonished the audience, and it is the night that the ghost's existence is first publicly acknowledged, even as the managers dismiss it as a joke. The event also marks the beginning of Christine's strange behavior: after the gala, she refused to appear at a charity concert, acted as though she were no longer mistress of her own destiny, and wrote to the Comte de Chagny to cease speaking in her favor, a letter that suggested a feeling of absolute dismay. The gala night, therefore, is not merely a celebration of retirement but the catalyst for the entire tragedy, setting in motion the chain of events that leads to Christine's abductions, the fall of the chandelier, and the eventual revelation of Erik's love and death. It is the moment when the Opera Ghost, previously a legend among the ballet-girls, becomes a tangible presence in the lives of the managers and the lovers, and when the novel's central conflict—between the ordinary world and the supernatural, between love and obsession—is first joined.