Gaston Leroux: The Phantom of the Opera

The famous novel "The Phantom of the Opera" by the French novelist Gaston Leroux was published in 1910. The hugely successful work has been re-released and translated into many languages (the first Czech translation dates back to 1919) and has been made into several films. The phantom of the opera appears as a manifestation of pure and unbridled imagination. A terrifying and extraordinary being born from an infernal imagination brings terror and uncertainty to the very centre of Paris. The opera house, whose perfect knowledge the author demonstrates, is the setting of a seemingly authentic story. In this novel, Leroux has created one of the mythical narratives of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, but in doing so he has actually only used the archetypes of the genre - and modernised and developed these archetypes, renewed them - adding his mystifying humour and setting them in everyday reality.