The Angel of Music

The Angel of Music is the central supernatural fiction of Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, a legend that Christine Daae's father, Daddy Daae, tells her in childhood and that Erik, the Opera Ghost, later exploits to seduce, train, and imprison her. The Angel is the story's pivotal deception: it is the name under which Erik's disembodied voice operates, the explanation for Christine's miraculous singing, and the mask that conceals a monstrous, possessive love. Its revelation as a lie marks the collapse of Christine's innocence and the beginning of the tragedy that engulfs the Chagny brothers, the Opera managers, and Erik himself.

The Legend and Its Origins

The Angel of Music is a figure from the tales of Daddy Daae, the Swedish peasant fiddler who taught his daughter the musical alphabet before she could read. In his stories, the Angel plays a part in the life of every great musician, visiting them at least once in their lives. Sometimes the Angel leans over a cradle, as with the story of Little Lotte, whose golden hair and blue eyes mirrored Christine's own, and that is how there come to be child prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than men at fifty. Sometimes the Angel comes later, because children are naughty and will not learn their lessons, and sometimes he does not come at all, because 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, often when they are sad and disheartened, and those who are visited by him quiver with a thrill unknown to the rest of mankind. When little Christine asked her father if he had heard the Angel, Daddy Daae shook his head sadly, but his eyes lit up as he promised: "You will hear him one day, my child! When I am in Heaven, I will send him to you!" This promise, made on the beaches of Perros-Guirec, becomes the foundation of Christine's credulity and the instrument of her captivity.

The Voice in the Dressing-Room

Three months before the gala performance that reveals her genius, Christine begins to hear a voice in her dressing-room at the Opera, a voice so beautiful it seems angelic. She had been told by Mamma Valerius, her benefactress, that it must be the Angel, and when she asks, the voice confirms it, claiming to be the Angel her father promised to send. The voice asks leave to give her lessons every day, and Christine agrees, keeping the secret between the voice, Mamma Valerius, and herself. The lessons are accompanied by a music that comes from behind the wall, wonderfully accurate, and the voice seems to understand her voice exactly, knowing precisely where her father had left off teaching her. In a few weeks, Christine hardly knows herself when she sings, and she is even frightened, dreading a sort of witchcraft behind it. The voice tells her to wait and see, that they will astonish Paris, and Christine lives in an ecstatic dream. It is only later, when she tells the voice about Raoul de Chagny, that the voice falls silent, and Mamma Valerius reveals that the voice is jealous, which first makes Christine realize she loves Raoul. The voice then speaks with great sadness, saying that if Christine must bestow her heart on earth, there is nothing for it but to go back to Heaven, and Christine, fearing nothing so much as never hearing it again, swears that Raoul is no more than a brother to her.

The Angel's Triumph and the Unmasking

The Angel's power culminates on the night of the retirement gala for MM. Debienne and Poligny, when Christine, singing in place of the ill Carlotta, reveals a new Margarita of unsuspected splendor, sobbing and fainting in the arms of her fellow-singers. Raoul, who has followed her to her dressing-room, hears the voice behind the door saying "Christine, you must love me!" and Christine's reply, "When I sing only for you!" The voice tells her, "Your soul is a beautiful thing, child, and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight." When Raoul confronts Christine at Perros, she insists the voice is the Angel of Music, and that he, Raoul, heard it too. But the truth emerges when Christine, in her narrative to Raoul on the roof of the Opera, describes her first abduction. After the fall of the chandelier, the voice sang the plaint of Lazarus, commanding her to come, and she followed it through a mirror into a dark passage, where a man in a mask seized her. When she tore off the mask, she saw a face of horror, and the voice, now revealed as a man, knelt before her and said, "It is true, Christine!...I am not an Angel, nor a genius, nor a ghost...I am Erik!" The Angel of Music is thus exposed as a lie, a fiction Erik used to ensnare her, and Christine's horror at the unmasking is the turning point of her captivity.

The Angel's Legacy and the Truth

After the unmasking, the Angel of Music ceases to be a benevolent fiction and becomes a name for Erik's obsession. Christine tells Raoul that Erik is not a ghost but "a man of Heaven and earth," and that he has given her a gold ring, warning that as long as she keeps it she is protected, but woe to her if she parts with it. When the ring is lost, Christine fears Erik's revenge. The Angel's name also becomes a public accusation: Raoul tells the commissary of police, M. Mifroid, that Christine was carried off by an angel, the Angel of Music, who is the Opera Ghost, whose real name is Erik. The commissary, like the examining magistrate M. Faure, takes Raoul for a madman, and the truth remains hidden. The Angel of Music, the legend that promised Christine a divine visitation, is ultimately revealed as the cruelest of Erik's deceptions, the mask that allowed a monster to pose as a god and to claim Christine's soul, her voice, and her freedom.