The Phantom of the Opera

Prologue

It is Paris in 1905. An auction of old props and relics from the Opéra Populaire (fictional, but based loosely on Paris’s Palais Garnier) is underway. An elderly man, Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny, purchases Lot 665, which is a music box topped with a monkey (“every detail exactly as she said,” he notes). The next item up for auction, Lot 666, is a broken but grand chandelier. The auctioneer remarks that the chandelier played a major role in "the strange affair of the Phantom of the Opera." When the dust cover is pulled off of the chandelier, it flickers to life and ascends to the ceiling at the center of the auditorium; the audience is transported back in time to 1881 as the Opéra is restored to its former grandeur.

Act One

The Opéra rehearses for that evening’s performance of Hannibal; as the company’s egotistical prima donna, Carlotta, sings her aria, a piece of the set suddenly falls from the catwalk. As the new owners of the company, André and Firmin, try