To Dream The Impossible Dream

To fight the unbeatable foe, to try when your arms are too weary, to reach the unreachable star, this is my quest, to follow that star - um, sorry. Right.

My impossible dream? A PotO stage play, not a musical. Strictly Leroux based. I'm hoping to remove our reputation from the gutter ALW forced us into. Leroux has an introduction to his book which can be considered part of the book, or considered the truth - it all depends on how you look at things. But of course, you guys knew that, right? (Menaces with Punjab.) Well. Here's my take on the opening of the show. Lighting not worked out yet.

The stage is bare, but for a desk which sits stage left.

Enter Leroux. He holds papers and a pen, which he lies upon a desk that sits stage left. He crosses to center and begins. He is intense and persuasive – this is his passion.

Leroux: The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade. 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 Daae, 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. The truth was slow to enter my mind. At every moment of the tragedy it was complicated by events which, at first sight, might be looked upon as… superhuman; and more than once I was within an ace of abandoning the task. But finally, I acquired the certainty that the Opera ghost was more than a mere shade. (Frustrated) Everyone seems to be persuaded that a terrible tragedy had taken place between the two de Chagny brothers in connection with Christine Daae. He could not tell me what became of Christine or the viscount. When I mentioned the ghost, he only laughed. He, too, had been told of the curious manifestations that seemed to point to the existence of an abnormal being. But there was a witness who appeared of his own accord and declared that he had often met the ghost. This witness was none other than the man whom all Paris called by no name, a faceless, silent man, a dark face without a name. The Persian.

This new development burned in me. I was so close to finding all I needed! I wanted, if there were still time, to find this valuable and eccentric witness. Finally, after centuries – months? - I discovered him in his little flat in the Rue de Rivoli, where he had lived ever since the…events. The Persian told me, with child-like candor, all that he knew about the ghost! (A long pause.) Five months after my visit, the Persian died. It almost seemed another casualty of the ghost, the long dead macabre presence of a cadaverous man. I shivered. And I went on.

My beliefs, moreover, was the opinion of the more serious people who, at one time or other, were mixed up in the Chagny case, who were friends of the Chagny family. In this connection, I should like to print a few lines which I received from a certain General.

General: (Entering stage right, somberly, then more intensely) I can not urge you too strongly to publish the results of your inquiry. I remember perfectly that, a few weeks before the disappearance of that great singer, Christine Daae, and the tragedy which threw the whole of the Faubourg Saint-Germain into mourning, there was a great deal of talk, in the foyer of the ballet, on the subject of the "ghost;" and I believe that it only ceased to be discussed in consequence of the later affair that excited us all so greatly. But, if it be possible--as, after hearing you, I believe--to explain the tragedy through the ghost, then I beg you sir, to talk to us about the ghost again. Sir, we have held our Phantoms far too long. Open our cage of memories, Monsieur Leroux. Tell us the truth. (Exit)

Leroux: Mysterious though the ghost may at first appear, he will always be more easily explained than the dismal story in which malevolent people have tried to picture two brothers killing each other who had worshiped each other all their lives. (A beat, then, desperately) Believe me!

With my bundle of papers in hand, I once more went over the ghost's vast domain, the huge building which he had made his kingdom. It was a world. A world that an extraordinary being had created, that he had controlled, and had loved. His world.
It will be remembered that, later, when digging in the substructure of the Opera, before burying the phonographic records of the artist's voice, the workmen laid bare a corpse. I can tell you this. He was no victim of the Commune. The wretches who were massacred, under the Commune, in the cellars of the Opera, were not buried on this side; I will tell where their skeletons can be found in a spot not very far from that immense crypt which was stocked during the siege with all sorts of provisions. I cannot begin to say how crucial it is you understand me now. This corpse, this thing, this grotesque cadaver, that we found, is not merely that. This corpse once held a creature who had genius that might have ruled all in the name of good – but, as it was so hideous, had no alternative but to shrink, be destroyed, rejected, outcast. (A beat) Spurned.

But in the end. The fabled opera ghost – the O.G. – the demon – the Angel of Music – was nothing but a man. A man, with a hideous face, and a supernatural genius, and a heart, a heart that could have held the empire of the world…

FIN

(Sniffle) That always makes me cry. Poor Erik. (Looks up.) Oh, damn. You caught me being sentimental. I am not sentimental. Okay. I'm sentimental. I try very hard to hid it, but I am. Most phans are. Haha.

I remain, gentlemen, your faithful and obedient servant,

J.G.