The Phantom of the Opera
Gaston Leroux · first published 1910
A newspaper serial that became a silent film, then a monster, then the longest-running musical in Broadway history.
18 versions · 1916–2011 · screen, stage, the air
Leroux’s novel ran in 1909–10 and was filmed in 1925 with Lon Chaney, whose unmasking is still the most famous few seconds in silent horror. What most people know now is the 1986 musical, which is a love story.
The book is a detective novel. It has a police investigation, an underground lake, and a narrator who insists throughout that all of this is documented fact — an old journalistic trick that Leroux, a court reporter by trade, knew exactly how to use.
Paris, 1909 — and the opera house really does have a lake
The Palais Garnier was built over ground so waterlogged that the foundations enclose a reservoir; the fire brigade trained in it. In 1896 one of the counterweights of the great chandelier fell into the auditorium and killed a woman. Leroux, a crime reporter, put both facts into his novel and let the reader assume he had invented them.
He wrote it as a serial for a newspaper, in the manner of a court report — depositions, testimony, a narrator insisting on documents. That is the joke of the book, and most adaptations replace it with a love story.
On screen
14Film and television, earliest first.
- 1916 The Phantom of the Opera Ernst Matray
- 1925 The Phantom of the Opera Rupert Julian
- 1937 Song at Midnight Ma-Xu Weibang
- 1943 Phantom of the Opera Arthur Lubin
- 1962 The Phantom of the Opera Terence Fisher
- 1974 The Phantom of Hollywood Gene Levitt
- 1976 Phantom of the Paradise Brian De Palma
- 1989 The Phantom of the Opera Dwight H. Little
- 1990 The Phantom of the Opera Tony Richardson
- 1995 The Phantom Lover Ronny Yu
- 1998 The Phantom of the Opera Dario Argento
- 2000 Phantom of the Megaplex Blair Treu
- 2004 The Phantom of the Opera Q295207
- 2011 The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall Nick Morris
On stage
3Opera, musical theatre and ballet made from it.
- — The Phantom of the Opera Andrew Lloyd Webber
- — Phantom of the Opera Ken Hill
- — The Phantom of the Opera
On the air
1Broadcast versions that were catalogued.
- — The Phantom of the Opera
Versions are listed where they are documented. A century of stage productions and most broadcasts were never catalogued at all, so this is what can be shown rather than everything that was ever made.