Sorelli

Sorelli is one of the principal dancers at the Paris Opera House, a woman of considerable stage presence and a marked superstition that makes her an early believer in the Opera Ghost. On the evening of the farewell gala performance given by the retiring managers, MM. Debienne and Poligny, her dressing-room is invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who have rushed up from the stage after dancing in Polyeucte, some laughing unnaturally, others crying in terror. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment to run through the speech she was to make to the resigning managers, looks around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It is little Jammes who gives the explanation in a trembling voice: "It's the ghost!" and locks the door.

Identity and Introduction

Sorelli's dressing-room is fitted up with official, commonplace elegance: a pier-glass, a sofa, a dressing-table and a cupboard or two provide the necessary furniture, while on the walls hang engravings, relics of her mother, who had known the glories of the old Opera in the Rue le Peletier, including portraits of Vestris, Gardel, Dupont, and Bigottini. To the brats of the corps de ballet, who are lodged in common dressing-rooms where they spend their time singing, quarreling, smacking the dressers and hair-dressers and buying one another glasses of cassis, beer, or even rhum, until the call-boy's bell rings, this room seems a palace. Sorelli is very superstitious; she shudders when she hears little Jammes speak of the ghost, calls her a "silly little fool," and then, as she is the first to believe in ghosts in general and the Opera ghost in particular, at once asks for details: "Have you seen him?"

The Ghost Scare in Her Dressing-Room

When little Jammes declares she has seen the ghost "as plainly as I see you now," and little Giry adds, "If that's the ghost, he's very ugly!" the room fills with talk. The ghost has appeared to them in the shape of a gentleman in dress-clothes, who suddenly stood before them in the passage, without their knowing where he came from, seeming to have come straight through the wall. Sorelli tries to show more pluck than the others. She goes up to the door and, in a quavering voice, asks, "Who's there?" but nobody answers. Feeling all eyes upon her, she makes an effort to show courage and says very loudly, "Is there any one behind the door?" Little Meg Giry, heroically holding Sorelli back by her gauze skirt, cries, "Whatever you do, don't open the door! Oh, Lord, don't open the door!" But Sorelli, armed with a dagger that never left her, turns the key and draws back the door, while the ballet-girls retreat to the inner dressing-room. She looks into the passage bravely; it is empty, a gas-flame casting a red and suspicious light into the surrounding darkness. She slams the door again with a deep sigh, saying, "No, there is no one there." When little Jammes insists the ghost must be prowling about and proposes that they all go down to the foyer together for the speech, Sorelli, stealthily, with the tip of her pink right thumb-nail, makes a St. Andrew's cross on the wooden ring which adorns the fourth finger of her left hand, and tells the girls, "Come, children, pull yourselves together! I dare say no one has ever seen the ghost."

The Death of Joseph Buquet and Its Aftermath

The terror in the dressing-room is compounded when Ma Jammes, built on the lines of a Pomeranian grenadier, bursts in with the news that Joseph Buquet, the chief scene-shifter, has been found hanging in the third-floor cellar. Sorelli turns very pale and says, "I shall never be able to recite my speech." The horrid news soon spreads all over the Opera, and the ballet-girls, crowding around Sorelli like timid sheep around their shepherdess, make for the foyer through the ill-lit passages and staircases, trotting as fast as their little pink legs can carry them. On the first landing, Sorelli runs against the Comte de Chagny, who is coming up-stairs. The count, generally so calm, seems greatly excited and says, "I was just going to you. Oh, Sorelli, what an evening! And Christine Daae: what a triumph!" Meg Giry interrupts with a saucy curtsey, "Six months ago, she used to sing like a CROCK! But do let us get by, my dear count. We are going to inquire after a poor man who was found hanging by the neck."

Relationship with Count Philippe de Chagny

Sorelli is known to be "on terms" with the Comte de Chagny, a nobleman of forty-one, a bachelor with plenty of leisure, who comes to spend an hour or two after dinner in the company of a dancer who, though not so very witty, has the finest eyes that ever were seen. The count often waits in the foyer with Sorelli until it is her time to "go on," and sometimes she hands him the little gaiters in which she runs down from her dressing-room to preserve the spotlessness of her satin dancing-shoes and her flesh-colored tights. Sorelli has an excuse for her intimacy with the count: she has lost her mother. On the night of the gala, after the count has followed his brother Raoul to Christine Daae's dressing-room, he turns to go to Sorelli's dressing-room but meets her on the way with her little troop of trembling ballet-girls.

The Farewell Ceremony and the Ghost's Appearance

At the farewell ceremony in the foyer of the ballet, Sorelli waits for the arrival of the retiring managers with a glass of champagne in her hand and a little prepared speech at the tip of her tongue. Behind her, the members of the Corps de Ballet, young and old, discuss the events of the day in whispers or exchange discreet signals with their friends. When MM. Debienne and Poligny appear on the steps of the foyer, Sorelli begins to recite her speech, but an exclamation from little Jammes—"The Opera ghost!"—breaks the smile of the managers so brutally that the expression of distress beneath it becomes apparent to all. The ghost, a face so pallid, so lugubrious and so ugly, with two such deep black cavities under the straddling eyebrows, slips through the crowd, and the others vainly hunt for him. Sorelli is furious; she has not been able to finish her speech. The managers kiss her, thank her, and run away as fast as the ghost himself.

Narrative Role and Significance

Sorelli's role in the novel is largely that of a witness and a social fixture. Her dressing-room serves as the opening scene where the ghost legend is vividly dramatized, and her connection to Count Philippe places her within the aristocratic circle that the tragedy touches. Her superstition, her dagger, and her protective gestures toward the younger dancers mark her as a figure of practical courage within the superstitious world of the ballet. Though she does not participate in the central mystery of Erik and Christine Daae, her presence anchors the reader in the everyday life of the Opera, where the ghost is both a source of terror and a subject of gossip. Her final appearance in the narrative is at the farewell ceremony, where her interrupted speech underscores the disruption the ghost brings to even the most routine of ceremonies.