Viscount Raoul de Chagny

The scene represented Margarita's garden.

"Gentle flowers in the dew, be message from me." As she sang these first two lines with her bunch of roses and lilacs in her hand, Christine, raising her head, saw the Viscount de Chagny in his box, and from that moment, her voice seemed less sure, less crystal clear than usual.

Something seemed to deaden and dull her singing.

"What a queer girl she is," said one of Carlotta's friends in the stalls almost aloud.

She's Meg Geary's mom, you know, Christine's friend.

She also delivers letters from the Phantom and gives Raoul his backstory of he was a circus guy.

He was in the freak show, I guess.

And maybe she helped him out? Anyway, hold your hand at the level of your eyes.

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.

Simon Gleeson is Raoul.

Sharon Millership as Meg Giry.

Boy and scarf were both soaked through.

The lady in black made a great fuss, but Christine laughed merrily and kissed the little boy, who was none other than the Viscount Raoul de Chagny, staying at Lannion with his aunt.

During the season, they saw each other and played together almost every day.

At the aunt's request, seconded by Professor Valerius, Daae consented to give the young viscount some violin lessons.

In this way, Raoul learned to love the same airs that had charmed Christine's childhood.

They also both had the same calm and dreamy little cast of mind.

They delighted in stories, in old Breton legends, and their favorite sport was to go and ask for them at the cottage doors like beggars.

There was one story that began, "A king sat in a little boat on one of those deep, still lakes that open like a bright eye in the midst of the Norwegian mountains." And another, "Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing.

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.

Uh, the West End production, the original West End production closed March 2020 due to COVID, but then a scaled down production with revised staging and, like, slightly more cost-efficient, uh, set pieces and a scaled back orchestra opened in the exact same theater in July 2021.

This is blamed on the ghost of the theater, but she refuses to participate in the upcoming opera if nothing is to be done.

Now worried about the prospects, the two new owners, Firmin and Andre, are suggested to cast ensemble member Christine Daaé in the lead.

It's a smashing success, and she's visited by her childhood flame, Raoul, and her mysterious voice teacher, The Phantom of the Opera."

That really is the first 20 minutes.

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

He has a much younger brother named Raoul, and he has two sisters.

The siblings all agreed not to split the estate up between them, which would have diminished it, so instead Philippe got it all, but he pays for everything for his siblings.

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.

There are tons of people milling around back there, but Raoul makes his way to Christine's dressing room, and he finds that she's still unconscious, and so he sits with her.

Philippe leaves to visit Sorelli.

This is a special moment.

It's a big deal because Joseph has history in the Phantom universe, having originated the role of Raoul in Love Never Dies, the Phantom of the Opera sequel, starring alongside Sierra Borges, who is reuniting with in this current cast of

Phantom.

Joseph has worked extensively in theatre alongside countless plays and prestigious venues.

My mum loved musicals.

But I hadn't seen it until I was doing Love Never Dies.

And I thought I ought to dutifully go and see what Raoul was like in the first thing.

And I remember vividly going along a little begrudgingly thinking, oh, I'm off to see some museum piece.

Not only that, it wasn't a ghost, but it was an actual human man.

The author believes that proving the existence of the ghost will also explain what happened in three as-yet-unsolved mysteries, the kidnapping of Christine Daae, the disappearance of Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny, and the death of Raoul's brother, Count Philippe.

The author says that he was able to speak with a man who once knew the Opera Ghost.

This man is called the Persian, and he showed the author letters from Christine Daae, and the author felt he was a trustworthy person.

We are told that the Chagny family has encouraged the author to publish his evidence because the current narrative is that Raoul and Philippe killed each other, which the family does not believe.

The author says that the final piece of the puzzle was the discovery of a body under the Paris Opera House, which the author says is the Phantom's corpse.

We are then told that the author will tell us the full story in chronological order, which brings us to the first chapter.

On the death of old Count Philipe, he became the head of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in France, whose arms dated back to the 14th century.

When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music, I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between the phenomenon ascribed to the ghost and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris upper classes— and I soon conceived the idea that this tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question.

The events do not date more than thirty years back, and it would not be difficult to find at the present day in the foyer of the ballet old men of the highest respectability, men upon whose word one could absolutely rely, who would remember as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic conditions that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daaeh, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny, a vicomte is an aristocratic title that's below an earl but above a baron in English, we would say viscount, 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 Scribeside.

but none of those witnesses had until that day thought that there was any reason for connecting the more or less legendary figure of the opera ghost with the terrible story.

The truth was slow to enter my mind, puzzled by an inquiry that at every moment was complicated by events which, at first sight, might be looked upon as superhuman.

Exactly, exactly.

So I was excited to see more of the Raoul relationship because that one never,

it never made sense to me,

you know, why she was so attached to him.