The Phantom of the Opera, with eBook recap

At the Paris Opera, young soprano Christine Daaé becomes a sensation after secret lessons from a voice she believes may be an angel sent by her dead father. The voice belongs to Erik, a masked, disfigured musical genius who lives beneath the building and terrorizes its managers as the Opera Ghost. Christine's childhood friend Raoul returns and falls in love with her. After Erik abducts Christine to his underground home, she unmasks him and learns the truth, yet pities him. She and Raoul plan to flee, but Erik seizes her during a performance. Guided by the Persian, Raoul reaches the cellars and is trapped. Erik threatens mass death unless Christine marries him. Her willing kiss and compassion transform his decision: he releases both lovers and lets them go. Christine returns his ring, Raoul and she leave together, and Erik dies shortly afterward, finally acknowledged as a man rather than a supernatural specter.

Rumors of an Opera Ghost circulate through the Paris Opera after performers report a strange, skeletal figure and the scene-shifter Joseph Buquet is found hanged. At a gala for the retiring managers, the little-known soprano Christine Daaé replaces Carlotta and sings brilliantly. Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny, recognizes Christine as his childhood companion and visits her dressing room, where he overhears an unseen male voice. The Opera's new managers, Moncharmin and Richard, receive letters signed by the Ghost demanding a monthly payment, control over casting, and the permanent reservation of Box Five. They assume the demands are a practical joke or an inside scheme. Madame Giry, the box keeper, insists that the occupant is real, but a search of the supposedly empty box explains nothing.

Christine tells Raoul that her unseen teacher is the Angel of Music her father once promised would visit her. Raoul suspects a human deceiver, while Christine remains both devoted and afraid. The Ghost orders the managers to cast Christine as Marguerite in Faust, but they defy him and restore Carlotta. During the performance Carlotta's voice suddenly breaks into a croak, and the great chandelier crashes into the audience. Christine then vanishes for a time. Raoul follows clues connected with her father's grave and hears the mysterious voice again, strengthening his conviction that a dangerous man is exploiting Christine's beliefs. A secretive nighttime journey and Christine's evasions widen the distance between the two childhood friends even as Raoul's love grows.

At a masked ball, Raoul confronts Christine after seeing her speak with a figure costumed as the Red Death. She later takes him onto the Opera roof and explains what happened during her disappearance. The voice carried her through a mirror in her dressing room and down to a furnished house beside an underground lake. Her captor and teacher is Erik, the Opera Ghost, a brilliant musician who wears a mask over a horribly disfigured face. When Christine secretly removed the mask, Erik raged at her but eventually agreed to release her on condition that she return. She fears his power yet feels pity for his isolation. Raoul and Christine declare their love and plan to escape after her coming performance, unaware that Erik has listened to them from the roof.

Erik retaliates against Christine and Raoul's plan. He torments the managers with impossible-seeming tricks, including making their cash payment disappear despite elaborate precautions. Madame Giry reveals that the Ghost has promised to make her daughter an empress, further convincing the managers that she is involved even though she cannot explain his feats. Raoul and Christine continue preparing to flee, but family pressure and Erik's surveillance close around them. During Christine's performance, the lights go out and she disappears from the stage before the entire audience. The managers, police, and Raoul begin separate, confused efforts to find her, while it becomes clear that the decisive search must enter the hidden structure beneath the Opera.

The police commissary questions Raoul and the managers but treats the disappearance as a conventional abduction. The Persian, a man who knows both Erik and the Opera's hidden routes, gives Raoul pistols and warns him to keep his hand raised against Erik's strangling noose. While the official investigation follows ordinary clues, the pair pass through concealed doors and descend into the Opera cellars. Their route leads through the dark workings beneath the stage, where familiar theatrical mechanisms give way to passages controlled by Erik. The Persian's precautions make clear that the apparent supernatural events depend on a human adversary with exceptional knowledge of the building and a talent for lethal traps.

Raoul and the Persian continue through the cellars and cross the underground lake toward Erik's house. Their attempt to enter secretly leads them into a sealed room of mirrors. It is a torture chamber: manipulated reflections create the illusion of an endless landscape while steadily increasing heat and thirst weaken the prisoners. They can hear Christine and Erik nearby but cannot reach her. Erik is pressing Christine to accept him, while she tries to learn whether Raoul has come and whether he is still alive. The rescuers search for any hidden catch or exit as the artificial forest changes around them and their situation becomes desperate.

Raoul and the Persian endure the torture chamber until Christine chooses the scorpion and agrees to marry Erik, preventing the planned explosion. Water then floods the chamber, and they lose consciousness. Christine believes Raoul has died, but her compassion changes the outcome. She allows Erik to kiss her forehead and returns a kiss, treating him with a tenderness he has never known. Erik abandons his demand, revives and releases the prisoners, and lets Christine leave with Raoul. He asks her to return his ring and to announce his death. Christine fulfills the promise. Erik later tells the Persian that the lovers are free and that he expects to die; a notice soon reports his death. Christine and Raoul leave Paris together, and the human identity behind the Opera Ghost is finally pieced together.

Erik traps Raoul and the Persian in a heated torture chamber while forcing Christine to choose between marriage and a catastrophic explosion. She chooses the scorpion, agreeing to marry him and saving the people above, but finds Raoul apparently drowned in the adjoining room. Christine then gives Erik the ordinary compassion he has never received: she lets him kiss her forehead and kisses him in return. Overcome, he frees Raoul and the Persian and permits Christine to leave with Raoul, asking only that she return his ring and later announce his death. She keeps that promise. Erik tells the Persian what happened and dies soon afterward of grief. Christine and Raoul disappear from Paris and are understood to have married, while the narrator's later investigation identifies Erik as the extraordinary but criminally dangerous human being behind the Opera Ghost legend.