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Missing material from Leroux
22 December 2014 03:56 amI'm fascinated to find that the original serialisation of Leroux' "Phantom of the Opera" contained lengthy scene between Raoul and Christine in which he offers her honourable marriage and she turns him down -- for more or less the same reasons I ascribed to her in Chapter 2 of "Count Philippe Takes a Hand"! Always nice to know that my character-extrapolations from canon were accurate :-)
(And if this scene -- in which Christine avows her love for Raoul in the clearest of terms -- had been retained in the novel's published version, instead of being cut in order to keep the young man in a state of constant uncertainty, would we still have fangirls asserting that "Christine was in love with Erik!", I wonder?)
Other scenes that were cut mainly involved the misadventures of the managers (although the loss of a detailed description and reference to the Persian in the middle of the story is unfortunate, since it results in the character's coming across as having been invented only as a deus ex machina for the final scenes). However, the relationship between the Count and Sorelli and the Count and Christine was also originally touched upon in some detail in a passage describing events during the entr'acte of "Faust" -- again an omission to be regretted, since Sorelli is another character who simply disappears from the action of the published novel.
(And if this scene -- in which Christine avows her love for Raoul in the clearest of terms -- had been retained in the novel's published version, instead of being cut in order to keep the young man in a state of constant uncertainty, would we still have fangirls asserting that "Christine was in love with Erik!", I wonder?)
Elle le voyait d'abord tout petit, quand il lui avait rammassé son écharpe dans la mer, et elle lui disait qu'à partir de ce jour-là elle l'avait aimé, à cause de son courage d'homme, et puis, elle se le rappelait quand il écoutait, à ses côtés, les légendes du père Daaé et elle l'avait encore aimé là à cause qu'il était doux comme une fille; et puis, quand il était revenu plus tard, elle l'avait détesté, parce qu'il n'avait pas osé prononcer des parole que son cœur, inconsciemment, attendait, et ceci était encore une preuve qu'elle l'aimait. Elle n'avait jamais cessé de l'aimer du plus chaste amour, si loin pouvait-elle remonter les années.
Other scenes that were cut mainly involved the misadventures of the managers (although the loss of a detailed description and reference to the Persian in the middle of the story is unfortunate, since it results in the character's coming across as having been invented only as a deus ex machina for the final scenes). However, the relationship between the Count and Sorelli and the Count and Christine was also originally touched upon in some detail in a passage describing events during the entr'acte of "Faust" -- again an omission to be regretted, since Sorelli is another character who simply disappears from the action of the published novel.
