A Retrospective Look at The Phantom of the Opera

I have seen The Phantom of the Opera several times. Just before it closed on Broadway last year, I went to see it again. At the time I was finishing my Masters in Clinical Counseling, and I was struck by how well this story aligns with the mental health challenges of grief and loss. Everything fell into place for me in a new and deeply moving way when I realized that The Phantom of the Opera is not about a disfigured man in a mask.

I’d like to start this analysis in the middle, with the song Christine sings in the graveyard to her father, “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again.” This song often confuses the audience. It doesn’t seem related to the plot—a woman trapped between the love of her life and a disfigured man who lured her into a world of intoxicating talent that she cannot escape. But actually—the whole show is about Christine going mad in the wake of the death of her father. There are other references to her father in the show. From the beginning, it was her father who “once spoke of an angel” of music. She believes that this terrible need to succeed, this pressure to give all of herself to her performance is the wish of her father.

Christine is, in fact, caught in the throes of grief that quickly becomes madness. She hears “songs in [her] head” and is paranoid about “far too many notes” about her professional work because she is unable to sleep. She is tortured by not having her father’s approval for the life she wants outside of the theatre—the life with Raoul. She is tortured by her inner demons as she sees that they are disfigured and are warping her and confusing her and causing her to lose her grip on reality.

She’s not the only one seeing this. The ballet instructor takes on the gatekeeping role of a doctor—protects Christine from her harshest critics. She knows Christine descends into a dark place at night, but she watches from a distance, hovering just close enough to know when Christine is going to go “past the point of no return.” She sends Lottie after Christine because Lottie is a simpler character. She wants the talent and the recognition, but she’s not tortured by the need for it. At the end, Lottie discovers the dark place “inside [Christine’s] mind” but when she takes a step closer, the Phantom is gone. Lottie is not tortured by Christine’s grief. She is curious enough to take a look, curious enough to want Christine’s talent, but the end makes it clear that she won’t go through the same emotional turmoil.

Time to circle back to the beginning. Many forget, in the excitement of a large scale musical, that the musical began with a dull auction of items at the opera house in which Raoul, now elderly and feeble, is bidding on items that remind him of Christine. It seems as though the “one love, one lifetime” they shared was one in which he outlived her. While unclear if, as some scholars theorize, Christine killed herself immediately after “The Point of No Return” because she could not cope with having to make a final decision with very real consequences or if she and Raoul did have some measure of happiness together for a while, I think there’s a very raw, deep sadness in Raoul at the beginning being swept into all of these memories.

As a character, Raoul is a nice, decent human being who freely gives love and affection. He is willing to do the work—to fight for Christine when she starts losing her mind and to promise her that “anywhere [she] goes [he] will go too”. Despite not understanding her, he fights for her life. Even when confronted with the reality of what she sees, the masked demon she’s wrestling that holds her hostage and demands that she sacrifice her life for her art to stay on the path her father set for her, Raoul wants her to escape, even if it means he is out of the picture. Even when he feels that his life is hanging from a noose and it is killing him to watch her flirt with this madness, he refuses to demand anything of her. He doesn’t judge her for being swept into this self destructive spiral of chaos and confusion and pain and grief that quite literally shatters her. He understands that she thinks everything is her fault because she’s lost her anchor point in life—the father who provided the stability, patience, and guidance to keep her grounded.

It is beautiful and sad that the play begins with him trying to find some clarity and comfort in broken objects, which is a strong suggestion that the life Raoul and Christine might have had together was not the happy one that he envisioned. He now carries the weight of grief and loss. Is he mourning something he never had? Something that existed only in his mind? Was he intoxicated by Christine so much that he himself was drawn into a fantasy of a perfect life he could never live? Ignoring the warning signs and the notes and everything that was part of Christine’s masquerade because he desired her above his own sanity?

So what about the Phantom himself? Is the Phantom of the Opera real? While there may not be a masked man hiding in a private box in the theatre in the literal sense, I have no doubt that the proper word for how Christine feels is “haunted.” She is seeking an “angel of music” and she finds her voice in moments of wondering if her father still “think(s) of [her] fondly when [they’ve] said goodbye.” The language of the show discusses masking in an interesting way. It hides disfigurement. It hides lies. It hides darkness. It hides pain. But then there are scenes like masquerade—it provides freedom and relief to not have to show one’s face. Pretending to be wearing a “paper face” gets someone who is struggling through the day. It can feel grand for a minute, help a person forget that at any moment their life (or a chandelier) can come crashing down at their feet. Ultimately, Christine wants there to be someone watching. Some physical presence still there, pushing her to continue down the path her father wanted her on– a path that was once crystal clear to her.

The Phantom of the Opera, though undoubtedly seen as a classic, seems to no longer be included in the canon of theatrical masterpieces. It ran on Broadway for so long that people stopped wanting to see it. They felt it would always be there, they knew there was dancing and masks. It stopped being exciting when it stopped being reinterpreted. But what I see in this show is powerful and relevant. This is how human beings struggle—we get pulled in multiple directions, and even when we know which one is bad for us we can’t get ourselves out. We want the wrong things, the wrong people. We lose our way forward and worry that every step we take is going to result in criticism that could end our lives. We know a good thing when we see it, but still we hesitate to reach for it. We mourn losses in peculiar ways, ways we don’t fully connect or understand. We walk the line between protecting our loved ones and protecting ourselves. There is so much of the human condition that we do not understand. I applaud The Phantom of the Opera for taking these universal ideas and disguising them—masking them, if you will—into a story that is engaging to watch and beautiful to listen to. It helps us to process and confront our own darkness within the safety of our own emotions and minds while collectively surrounded by others grappling with and identifying with their own versions of these questions and dilemmas, their own moments that resonate with the elements of this spectacle that are, in fact, incredibly grounded in reality.