Phantom of the Opera Research Paper, Unfinished.

The phantom of the opera is a long lived novel written by Gaston Leroux in the early 1900’s with a French background. This classic work enjoys worldwide fame as a tragic love story containing amazing special effects on film and on stage as well as stunning music. Gaston Leroux wrote the horror novel "Le Fantome de l'Opera," published in 1911. Leroux had heard stories of ghosts haunting the Paris Opera House and decided to base a novel around these tales. He even boasted having researched the opera house and finding evidence of dead bodies in the cellars. After receiving only mixed reviews, the novel was run as a series of short chapters in newspapers with accompanying illustrations. This made the story more successful. Eventually, Universal Pictures became aware of the story, and in 1925, the company created the first film version of the novel under the title "The Phantom of the Opera." The silent film created a star of Lon Chaney, who starred the tormented phantom. Some consider this early film version to be the most true to the novel. However, the director changed the ending from one where the phantom dies of a broken heart to one where he attempts to escape with Christine, his young protégé and love interest, but instead becomes victim to an angry mob that kills him. Andrew Lloyd Webber was the creator of the most successful stage version of "The Phantom of the Opera" in the mid-1980s. The musical opened in 1986 at London's Her Majesty's Theatre as a huge success. "Phantom" won every major British theatre award, and since its opening, every seat has consistently been sold out. When the music from the theater version was released in London, it went straight to number 1 on the charts. The musical opened on Broadway in New York in January 1988 and has set many attendance records since that time. In the theater version, Webber took the character of Phantom, created by Leroux as a menacing horror character, and turned him into more of a tragic, hopelessly in love