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igenlodeI think I'm now fairly definitely embarked upon Chapter 4 of "An Outsider and a Foreigner" (though I'm not entirely satisfied with the end of Chapter 3, where I never really found an effective form of words for the final sentence).
I remember vaguely hearing fan speculation in the past that the "Notes" scene in the managers' office must represent a montage of events over several days, rather than being a single episode (likewise the barricades timeline in "Les Miserables") -- certainly for the purposes of my plot there needs to be a lot more than one day between the gala performance and the opening of "Il Muto", if Hertha is to get on reasonably friendly terms with Christine before the rooftop scene! Nor, in the original, does it make sense for Raoul to be pledging undying love and protection to Christine if he literally *hasn't seen her* since their one brief reunion in the dressing-room with its unpromising ending; there must have been some considerable development of their relationship between her return to the Opera and that opening night.
And it really doesn't make sense for the Phantom to expect an new opera to be put on overnight, even if we can assume that he has been coaching Christine in the role of the Countess in advance and that the production is already in the opera company's repertoire, and hence everyone else knows their parts, the orchestra have the music, the scenery, costumes and props exist backstage, etc. etc. It just isn't practical. At the very least they need to warn the audience in advance! I suppose the only other explanation is that they were already playing "Il Muto", and that he simply wanted Christine substituted into the leading role of a performance that was scheduled for the next day anyway...
"In the new production of 'Il Muto' you will therefore cast Carlotta as the pageboy" does make it sound as if the production was already planned to happen (rather than being dictated by the Phantom's whim) with Carlotta as the leading lady, and that he simply demands a switch in the cast for the forthcoming season. (I think the only actual reference to "Il Muto" taking place that day is in the note Carlotta receives, telling her that "Christine Daaé will be singing on your behalf tonight -- be prepared for a great misfortune should you attempt to take her place", a misfortune that duly occurs when she sings the Countess.)
Moreover, the whole business of "I have sent you several notes detailing how my theatre is to be run and you have not followed my instructions.... now it is to be war between us" makes very little sense in the context where the notes in question have only been received a matter of minutes earlier! I think we can effectively gloss over most of this by having Raoul going off to argue with the managers on a regular basis over several days in meetings to which Hertha is not privy, but I think the 'several notes' really do have to take place over a more extended period, however insanely entitled to instant obedience the Phantom may feel himself to be ;-p
Chapter 4 so far has ended up being about musical-Christine's backstory and her parents; what I haven't worked out is where Raoul fits into all this in terms of the characters' mutual chronology. I wish I were happier with this story as a whole.
I've spent the previous two chapters juggling Hertha and Raoul's relationship (Hertha seems to have protested in rather too many places that there is 'nothing romantic' in it, which is the unfortunate side-effect of writing at an incredibly slow and laborious speed so that I lose track of what has already been said -- the repetition will have to be edited) and trying to make it look as if he and Christine have some potentially more deep connection so that Hertha is rationally afraid of losing him, without making him look like a complete swine. It's supposed to be 'they can't help themselves but out of loyalty they don't give in to it', like Lancelot and Guinevere. It tends to look more like Raoul being (a) blind to his wife's feelings and (b) shallow and selfish.
And more worryingly, when does he even get to have contact with Christine? Having already assured his wife that the rumours not only are but will remain unfounded, it's hard to see how he ends up having much to do with his childhood sweetheart at all, even from a distance...
So having now created a fresh scenario where Christine, whom he somehow knew in adolescence before Hertha was even in the country, has been in Paris *all along* (and in need emotionally if not financially as a result of her father's death) just makes it even worse -- apparently he knew her briefly, then dropped the acquaintance for some reason, and now wants to pick it up again. Who separated them originally? How? When? At what point did Christine's father die? (Raoul doesn't appear to know about it before their reunion -- "Father is dead, Raoul" -- so it must have been after they last saw one another.)
Of course in Leroux canon Christine and her father are living in Paris at the time of his death, but then Raoul himself isn't (in fact Philippe rather implies at the start of the book that his little brother has never been to the capital). In this story Raoul has been living with his parents in Paris all along, so how does he lose track of Christine -- and how did they come to know each other in the first place?
I really didn't think this through well enough...
I sent off the first five supposedly corrected chapters of Arctic Raoul to another (non-fan) relative, who also, somewhat to my surprise, seemed to work out that it was based on "Phantom" without being told this in advance, and to accept that without finding the whole idea weird and exploitative -- I doubt she has ever even heard of fan-fiction (though probably has read Jean Rhys...) What is interesting was that she commented that it seemed suited to publication 'in episodes' as a serial, which of course is pretty much how it was made up for my entertainment, and how fan-fiction gets delivered; apparently it shows!
She picked up at least two further embarrassing mistakes which had *somehow* slipped through repeated proof-readings, as well as querying a lot of my more 'old-fashioned' locutions; I didn't look any of these up but was just writing according to what seemed to fit, so they may simply be errors.
The other outstanding issue which was previously commented upon, of course, is the question of how to cope with the references back to very specific details of the original novel; for example, I had already cut allusions to the newspaper column about Raoul's engagement because it didn't make sense to my previous reader and was just complicating the scene in question. And in particular how to deal with the set-up at the beginning, where the loss of Christine's ring, which is supposed to trigger the whole panicked flight, only gets one obscure reference in passing; if I'd written it to be accessible to the fandom-blind I'd probably have constructed the whole opening differently (as I did for Hertha), but having written it as I did it's very hard to see how to change it retrospectively.
I didn't make any major changes to the opening because I just didn't know how to do it (and of course if you *are* sending something off for publication, the beginning is the very most important bit).
I remember vaguely hearing fan speculation in the past that the "Notes" scene in the managers' office must represent a montage of events over several days, rather than being a single episode (likewise the barricades timeline in "Les Miserables") -- certainly for the purposes of my plot there needs to be a lot more than one day between the gala performance and the opening of "Il Muto", if Hertha is to get on reasonably friendly terms with Christine before the rooftop scene! Nor, in the original, does it make sense for Raoul to be pledging undying love and protection to Christine if he literally *hasn't seen her* since their one brief reunion in the dressing-room with its unpromising ending; there must have been some considerable development of their relationship between her return to the Opera and that opening night.
And it really doesn't make sense for the Phantom to expect an new opera to be put on overnight, even if we can assume that he has been coaching Christine in the role of the Countess in advance and that the production is already in the opera company's repertoire, and hence everyone else knows their parts, the orchestra have the music, the scenery, costumes and props exist backstage, etc. etc. It just isn't practical. At the very least they need to warn the audience in advance! I suppose the only other explanation is that they were already playing "Il Muto", and that he simply wanted Christine substituted into the leading role of a performance that was scheduled for the next day anyway...
"In the new production of 'Il Muto' you will therefore cast Carlotta as the pageboy" does make it sound as if the production was already planned to happen (rather than being dictated by the Phantom's whim) with Carlotta as the leading lady, and that he simply demands a switch in the cast for the forthcoming season. (I think the only actual reference to "Il Muto" taking place that day is in the note Carlotta receives, telling her that "Christine Daaé will be singing on your behalf tonight -- be prepared for a great misfortune should you attempt to take her place", a misfortune that duly occurs when she sings the Countess.)
Moreover, the whole business of "I have sent you several notes detailing how my theatre is to be run and you have not followed my instructions.... now it is to be war between us" makes very little sense in the context where the notes in question have only been received a matter of minutes earlier! I think we can effectively gloss over most of this by having Raoul going off to argue with the managers on a regular basis over several days in meetings to which Hertha is not privy, but I think the 'several notes' really do have to take place over a more extended period, however insanely entitled to instant obedience the Phantom may feel himself to be ;-p
Chapter 4 so far has ended up being about musical-Christine's backstory and her parents; what I haven't worked out is where Raoul fits into all this in terms of the characters' mutual chronology. I wish I were happier with this story as a whole.
I've spent the previous two chapters juggling Hertha and Raoul's relationship (Hertha seems to have protested in rather too many places that there is 'nothing romantic' in it, which is the unfortunate side-effect of writing at an incredibly slow and laborious speed so that I lose track of what has already been said -- the repetition will have to be edited) and trying to make it look as if he and Christine have some potentially more deep connection so that Hertha is rationally afraid of losing him, without making him look like a complete swine. It's supposed to be 'they can't help themselves but out of loyalty they don't give in to it', like Lancelot and Guinevere. It tends to look more like Raoul being (a) blind to his wife's feelings and (b) shallow and selfish.
And more worryingly, when does he even get to have contact with Christine? Having already assured his wife that the rumours not only are but will remain unfounded, it's hard to see how he ends up having much to do with his childhood sweetheart at all, even from a distance...
So having now created a fresh scenario where Christine, whom he somehow knew in adolescence before Hertha was even in the country, has been in Paris *all along* (and in need emotionally if not financially as a result of her father's death) just makes it even worse -- apparently he knew her briefly, then dropped the acquaintance for some reason, and now wants to pick it up again. Who separated them originally? How? When? At what point did Christine's father die? (Raoul doesn't appear to know about it before their reunion -- "Father is dead, Raoul" -- so it must have been after they last saw one another.)
Of course in Leroux canon Christine and her father are living in Paris at the time of his death, but then Raoul himself isn't (in fact Philippe rather implies at the start of the book that his little brother has never been to the capital). In this story Raoul has been living with his parents in Paris all along, so how does he lose track of Christine -- and how did they come to know each other in the first place?
I really didn't think this through well enough...
I sent off the first five supposedly corrected chapters of Arctic Raoul to another (non-fan) relative, who also, somewhat to my surprise, seemed to work out that it was based on "Phantom" without being told this in advance, and to accept that without finding the whole idea weird and exploitative -- I doubt she has ever even heard of fan-fiction (though probably has read Jean Rhys...) What is interesting was that she commented that it seemed suited to publication 'in episodes' as a serial, which of course is pretty much how it was made up for my entertainment, and how fan-fiction gets delivered; apparently it shows!
She picked up at least two further embarrassing mistakes which had *somehow* slipped through repeated proof-readings, as well as querying a lot of my more 'old-fashioned' locutions; I didn't look any of these up but was just writing according to what seemed to fit, so they may simply be errors.
The other outstanding issue which was previously commented upon, of course, is the question of how to cope with the references back to very specific details of the original novel; for example, I had already cut allusions to the newspaper column about Raoul's engagement because it didn't make sense to my previous reader and was just complicating the scene in question. And in particular how to deal with the set-up at the beginning, where the loss of Christine's ring, which is supposed to trigger the whole panicked flight, only gets one obscure reference in passing; if I'd written it to be accessible to the fandom-blind I'd probably have constructed the whole opening differently (as I did for Hertha), but having written it as I did it's very hard to see how to change it retrospectively.
I didn't make any major changes to the opening because I just didn't know how to do it (and of course if you *are* sending something off for publication, the beginning is the very most important bit).
no subject
Date: 2021-02-01 03:56 pm (UTC)To sum it up, it looks like this:
- u/s Christine: plays one of the Hannibal Princesses, the Mirror Bride, the Triangle Girl in Masquerade, and sometimes a pageboy in Don Juan Triumphant
- u/s Phantom: can sometimes understudy Raoul as well (see Jeremy Stolle or Greg Mills in the Broadway production), otherwise, he's sometimes the Auction Man, one of the Hannibal Soldiers, Mandarin Man/African Man in Masquerade, pretty much always Passarino in Don Juan Triumphant
- u/s Raoul: as mentioned above, can sometimes understudy the Phantom, Drummer Boy in Masquerade, Marksman just before Don Juan Triumphant
- u/s Carlotta: Wild Woman in Hannibal, Confidante in Il Muto, Gauloise/Frilly Lady/Rococo Lady in Masquerade
- u/s Meg: Pretty much every girl in the corps de ballet is expected to take over the role if the principal Meg gets sick, but there's always one (or two) who have priority. Otherwise, she's the Gypsy Girl in Masquerade (or the Monkey Girl, it depends).
- u/s Reyer/André: Rigoletto in the Masquerade
For the others I didn't mention, it's mostly because it really varies. Long story short, if you're part of the ensemble in POTO, you're also expected to know one or more of the main roles and jump in whenever you're required to, and even then, they may need stanbys (Scott Davies for instance was the standby Phantom in the West End production for a LONG time, don't know if it's still the case or if he retired).
no subject
Date: 2021-02-01 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-02 01:04 am (UTC)