Christine Daaé

So here is the recap.

Okay, so where we left off, we learn that after Christine Daaé's magnificent performance, she canceled all her other singing engagements and seemed to retreat from the limelight.

People didn't know why, and it was this great mystery.

Raoul sent her many letters reminding her that they knew each other as children, but he didn't receive an answer until he finally does get a letter from Christine saying that she does remember him and that she's going to the town of Perros to honor the anniversary of her father's death.

Raoul takes this as an invitation for him to join her there, and he rushes off to the train station.

He misses the earlier train, but he gets a later one, and it gets him there in the evening.

On the train, Raoul remembers what he knows about Christine and her family.

So she's the daughter of Swedish peasants, but her father was an excellent violinist, and after her mother died, her father took her all over the place, and he would play his fiddle at fairs and things and earn money, and Christine would sometimes sing with him.

Under no circumstances do you have to hand it to COVID.

How would we describe this? Young ingenue Christine Daae, who is so dumb that she assumes that any voice, if she cannot immediately identify the source, must be a real ghost or an angel from heaven.

It's true.

And then she takes singing lessons from just like a real ghost, I guess, according to her.

I'm just going to run this down.

Ben Lewis is the Phantom.

Anna O'Byrne is Christine Daae, which is very funny that they're listing her as Christine Daae in there and not her married name.

Maria Mercedes is Madame Giry.

One morning, Richard receives a letter in his office, which is written in the same weird red ink as the memorandum that the old managers showed them.

It talks about the opera, and it says that Christine Daaé is a much better singer than La Carlotta.

Then he reminds them that box five is supposed to be kept empty for him, and he requests that they don't sell it anymore, and he threatens that something bad will happen if they don't do what he says.

The note is signed by the Opera Ghost.

But he's writing to the managers as if he is this kind of cultured, somewhat sardonic, very nonchalant Paris gentleman.

Here's what he says.

"I should like to take advantage of the fact that you have not yet turned Christine Daaé out of doors by hearing her this evening in the part of Sybil, as that of Margarita has been forbidden her since her triumph of the other evening.

And I will ask you not to dispose of my box today, nor on the following days, for I cannot end this letter without telling you how disagreeably surprised I have been once or twice to hear on arriving at the opera that my box had been sold at the box office by your orders." So it's, it's sort of like this very upper-class, sophisticated, jaded sort of voice, the voice of a man who's kind of bored with the world but also wants things done exactly his way and expects them to be done simply because he asks them to be done.

You just push, and none of them are trying.

I know it's a small boat, but Christine weighs more than that.

You gotta push a little harder.

[laughs]

Okay.

So Phantom of the Opera is a British musical based on the Gaston Leroux novel of the same name, featuring music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Charles Hart, additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe, and book by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe.

It opened in the West End in 1986 with direction by Hal Prince, starring Sarah Brightman as Christine, Greatest Showpod alum Michael Crawford as The Phantom, and Steve Barton as Raoul.

An identical production transferred to Broadway in 1988 with the same principal cast, and these original productions won both Olivier and Tony Awards for Best Musical, as well as Best Actor for Crawford.

All right, so where we left off, all the dancers leave Sorelli's dressing room, and they bump into Philippe, the Comte de Chagny.

He is very excited because Christine Daaé sang so beautifully in the performance, and he tells the dancers not to say anything about Joseph Buquet's death because it would upset the managers on their last day.

We are told that Christine Daaé's performance was, in fact, worth being excited about and that it was odd because except for the fact that the principal singer, Carlotta, was ill that night, Christine wouldn't even have sung.

And so everyone is wondering why the opera would have kept such a talent hidden for so long.

We learn that Philippe is the head of the Chagny family because his father has previously died, and he's in his 40s.

Raoul was raised by his sisters, and he's shy and kind of innocent, but he loves the ocean and he's joined the Navy.

He is home for a six-month break before going off on an Arctic expedition, and his brother has taken the opportunity to show him the town, and they both frequent the opera, where Philippe is having a relationship with Sorelli.

At the end of Christine's performance, she faints, and this makes Raoul so upset that he rushes backstage to try to find her.

Here's what he says.

"The kidnapping of Christine Daaé, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny, and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the Opera on the Rue Scribe side." So that is pretty clear, right? A woman named Christine Daaé was kidnapped.

A man, a member of the French aristocracy, the Vicomte de Chagny, so that means the viscount of Chagny, right, the place Chagny.

He also, he disappeared, and the viscount's brother, Count Philippe, was found dead on the bank of a lake that exists under the Paris Opera House on the side of the opera house that is near the Rue Scribe, meaning near Scribe Street.

We're also told what the police think that the explanation was for these disappearances and the death and everything.

So Leroux, the narrator, says, here is a quote, "He," so he being the judge who ruled on this case, "He was bound to conclude in favor of the madness of the viscount and the accidental death of the elder brother, for lack of evidence to the contrary.

But he was nevertheless persuaded that a terrible tragedy had taken place between the two brothers in connection with Christine Daaé." Okay, so the verdict in the case that resulted from this crime was that the viscount was crazy, his brother died accidentally, since there was no evidence to prove that it was a murder, and that there had been some sort of falling out between the two brothers that had to do with the woman who was kidnapped, Christine Daaé.

So there has been a crime.

Yeah, I'm trying to think.

Yeah, it's not Christine Daae.

It's not Glinda.

It's not any of those.

It turns 40 this October.

Our Strange Duet is the YA adaptation of the musical, but it's told exclusively through Christine Daae's perspective.

There's a masked man haunting the Paris Opera House and falls in love with a dancer who he kind of trains as a protege to become this like amazing, you know, prima donna soprano for the opera company.

And there's a love triangle.