The Phantom of the Opera is fiction, but the stage it is set on is real. Gaston Leroux serialised the novel in Le Gaulois from 23 September 1909 to 8 January 1910, and it appeared as a book in March 1910. Two of its best-known images, the underground lake and the falling chandelier, have roots in the building he chose: the Palais Garnier in Paris.
The Horror
The Palais Garnier was begun in August 1861 to the designs of Charles Garnier and opened on 5 January 1875. During construction, water rose in the foundations. Workers could not pump the site dry and in the end built a large stone tank, a cistern, to hold it. Beneath the stage there is a cistern about 10 metres below ground level. It is reported that the Paris fire brigade use it for training in swimming in the dark. The “lake” of the novel is an enlargement of this. Its size in popular tellings is unconfirmed.
The chandelier is a documented accident. On 20 May 1896 a counterweight from the auditorium’s chandelier broke loose and crashed through the ceiling. It killed a concierge. The cause of the fall and the victim’s name are not confirmed here. Leroux wrote the scene thirteen or fourteen years later, and the accident is credited as its inspiration.
The Legend
Leroux presented his story as true. The claim in a preface that the Phantom had really existed is a reported feature of the book, and is unconfirmed in the sources consulted here. A further legend says he confessed on his deathbed in 1927 that the story was true. That is told as legend and is not documented.
Other details sometimes quoted as fact, such as a skeleton found in the cellars or a real box reserved for a ghost, are not confirmed here. They belong to the folklore that grows round any large, dark theatre.
The Modern Relic
The Palais Garnier stands in central Paris and is open to visitors. Its library-museum is included in unaccompanied visits. Whatever the novel’s claims, the building contains the two real things it borrowed: water in the dark under the stage, and a ceiling that once let a chandelier counterweight through.
