B. J. Harrison Reads The Phantom of the Opera recap

At the Paris Opera, soprano Christine Daaé becomes famous after secret lessons from a voice she believes is the Angel of Music promised by her dead father. Her childhood friend Raoul learns that the teacher is the Opera Ghost, a masked man named Erik who lives beneath the theater and enforces his demands with ingenious violence. Erik abducts Christine to his underground home; she pities him but loves Raoul, and the pair plan to flee. Erik seizes her again during a performance. Guided by a Persian who knows Erik's past, Raoul reaches the cellars but is trapped in a torture chamber. Erik threatens to destroy the Opera unless Christine agrees to marry him. She consents to save everyone and responds to his misery with genuine compassion. Moved by her kiss, Erik releases Christine, Raoul, and the Persian. Christine leaves with Raoul, while Erik dies soon afterward beneath the Opera, having surrendered the woman he could not compel to love him.

At a farewell gala for the Paris Opera's retiring managers, young soprano Christine Daaé replaces the leading singer and gives a performance that astonishes the company. Raoul de Chagny recognizes her as a childhood friend, but after the performance he hears a man's voice in her locked dressing room and cannot find its owner. The Opera's staff already trade stories about a ghost who occupies Box Five and moves unseen through the building. Stagehand Joseph Buquet, who claimed to have seen the figure, is found hanged. The incoming managers, Moncharmin and Richard, inherit letters demanding a salary, obedience in casting, and exclusive use of Box Five. Convinced that someone is playing a joke, they reject the instructions. Their attempts to occupy or watch the box produce disturbances they cannot explain, and the ghost's warnings become increasingly difficult to dismiss.

The new managers continue defying the ghost. Carlotta appears despite a warning not to sing and is publicly humiliated when her voice fails in an impossible fashion. A great chandelier falls into the audience, turning supernatural rumor into deadly danger. Christine, meanwhile, tells Raoul that her unseen singing master may be the Angel of Music her father once promised to send her. At Perros, where she visits her father's grave, Raoul hears the mysterious violin she associates with that promise and encounters a frightening figure. Christine repeatedly disappears from ordinary reach and is seen traveling in circumstances Raoul cannot understand. His love is mixed with jealousy, but her terror convinces him that the supposed angel is exerting real control over her.

At a masked ball, Raoul and Christine encounter a figure dressed as the Red Death. Raoul presses Christine to explain her secrecy. Later he follows the voice in her dressing room and discovers that she can vanish through the mirror. On the Opera roof, Christine finally tells him that her teacher is a living man named Erik, the masked Opera Ghost. Erik carried her through hidden passages to a house beside an underground lake. His music moved her, but when she removed his mask she saw his severely disfigured face and provoked his fury. He eventually released her after she promised to return. Unseen nearby, Erik hears Christine and Raoul declare their love and plan to escape. During a performance soon afterward, Christine vanishes from the stage in full view of the audience, demonstrating that Erik has acted before they can flee.

Raoul searches the Opera for Christine while the managers and police struggle to explain her disappearance. The managers are also obsessed with the ghost's salary: even under elaborate observation, money disappears from what appears to be a secure pocket. Madame Giry admits that she has long followed the ghost's instructions and describes his promises about her daughter's future, which only deepens the managers' suspicion of her. Raoul seeks help from a man known as the Persian, who understands that Erik is neither a spirit nor an ordinary criminal. The Persian knows Erik's history, his skill with mechanisms and traps, and the passages beneath the building. Warning Raoul to keep a hand raised against Erik's strangling cord, he prepares to guide him through the cellars in pursuit of Christine.

The Persian and Raoul descend through the Opera's hidden levels, evading staff, police, and Erik's defenses. The Persian's knowledge gets them close to the underground house, but they enter what seems to be a room lined with mirrors and find themselves sealed inside. Heat, deceptive reflections, and an illusory landscape turn the chamber into a machine designed to break its prisoners through thirst and madness. They hear Christine and Erik beyond the wall but cannot reach her. Christine pleads for their lives as Erik presses his demand that she marry him. The trapped men discover a way below the floor and find water, only to realize they have entered a chamber filled with barrels of gunpowder. Erik has prepared to destroy the Opera if Christine refuses him, making the fate of the crowded building part of the choice he forces upon her.

Erik presents Christine with two mechanisms, a scorpion and a grasshopper. One signifies consent to marry him; the other will ignite the stored gunpowder and destroy the Opera. Christine chooses the scorpion to save Raoul, the Persian, and the people above, and the torture chamber begins flooding instead of exploding. Erik rescues the two men. Christine then responds to him with compassion rather than terror, allowing him to kiss her and kissing his forehead. Because no one has ever offered him such tenderness, Erik abandons his attempt to possess her. He releases Raoul and the Persian and lets Christine leave with the man she loves. Later he tells the Persian that Christine returned his ring and that he expects to die, asking for a notice in the newspaper. Christine and Raoul disappear together. Erik dies beneath the Opera; the narrator identifies the remains later found there as his and reconstructs his life as a gifted builder, illusionist, and murderer whose longing for ordinary love ended in renunciation.

The Persian and Raoul enter the cellars beneath the Opera but fall into Erik's mirrored torture chamber. Erik gives Christine a choice represented by a scorpion and a grasshopper: agree to marry him or allow an explosion to destroy the Opera and everyone above them. Christine chooses the scorpion to save the others. Her compassion then reaches Erik where force has failed. She allows him to kiss her and returns a kiss to his disfigured face, the first he has received. Overcome, he frees Raoul and the Persian and permits Christine to leave with Raoul. Christine later returns his ring as promised. Erik tells the Persian what happened and asks that his death be announced. Christine and Raoul disappear together. Erik dies soon afterward and is secretly buried beneath the Opera; the later discovery of his skeleton and ring supports the narrator's account of the ghost as a brilliant, tormented human being.