Chapter XXI: The Night of the Opera

It was the night of the opera performance. This in itself would have been enough reason for excitement under normal circumstances, but in this case, the circumstances were anything but normal. Christine had given both Raoul and me instructions to keep an eye on her, in case Erik would try anything during the evening. So when I was standing behind the stage in the college concert hall waiting as the audience took their seats, it was not performance anxiety that made my heart beat faster. I looked at Christine. She appeared very serious and focused, but gave me a reassuring smile as our eyes met. Slowly, the sounds from the auditorium subsided as people found their seats. The opera could begin.

As the opening chords of the prelude sounded and Christine and Signor Piangi went on stage for the first scene, I took a few moments to stand in the wings and observe everything. The auditorium was full - I don't think there was a single empty seat to be found. On the front row, I could see Raoul and his father. Raoul was looking quite tense, and I was sure his mind was preoccupied by the same concerns as mine, while his father's face showed nothing but anticipation. Next to them sat Mlle Popeau and Mme Dubois, still carrying on a whispered conversation, until Philippe de Chagny hushed at them authoritatively. A few seats further away, I could see M. Ivanovich, and, to my surprise, Carlotta. She must have been released from hospital a while ago, but I couldn't imagine that she would want to see the opera she should have starred in now that she herself might never sing again.

M. Reyer, looking quite nervous, was conducting the orchestra. I recognized most of the musicians from casual encounters in the corridors, but apart from Louise Jammes, who played the flute, and a percussionist I had met at the Christmas party, I didn't know any of them personally.

From the moment she started singing, it was clear that this was Christine's night. Her very first notes, pure, angelic, crystal clear, captivated us all by their sheer unearthly beauty. Signor Piangi, in spite of all his experience, paled in comparison, and he even seemed quite a ridiculous figure when the plump, aging tenor tried to pose as Tom Rakewell, a supposedly young man. This was never clearer than at the beginning of his first solo, when his statement "Here I stand, my constitution sound, my frame not ill-favored..." produced some audible chuckles from students in the audience.

Subsequently Nick Shadow appeared, telling Tom Rakewell that his hitherto unknown uncle had just died, leaving him a fortune. Marcel was very captivating as the devil, mixing his usual good sense of humor with a suitable amount of subtle malice. I did not have time to stand and watch any more of the performance, as I had to get ready for the next scene, when I was to appear on stage as one of the whores in a brothel.

I must say I really enjoyed performing. As soon as I came on stage in my rather revealing outfit, I made the most of it, doing my best to play the part convincingly, even though I had no solo or anything to distinguish me from the rest of the chorus. Little Jammes was right next to me, and I could see that she was having fun as well. During all the time I was on stage, I quite forgot all about Christine and Erik, and was completely wrapped up in the action, where Nick Shadow brings Tom to a brothel, where he is initiated into manhood by the owner, Mother Goose. As we went off stage, Little Jammes whispered to me:

"That went well, don't you think? Now comes the best part!"

She was referring to Anne Truelove's solo scene, which was the finale of the first act. During the dress rehearsal, we had all been amazed at Christine's performance, and tonight promised to be even better from what we had seen of her so far.

Little Jammes proved to be right. We both watched the scene from the wings, exchanging stunned glances as Christine began:

"No word from Tom..."

It was not just that she was in complete command of her voice, the stage and the audience. At this point, she seemed to take control of the orchestra as well and lift it to artistic heights that M. Reyer had not succeeded to do at any time during the evening. Every musician in the room followed her, her very presence seemed to guide them to a better performance. The strange thing is that I don't even think Christine was conscious of what she was doing. She seemed to be possessed by a kind of musical genius which was contagious. I could see in the musicians' faces that they felt it, too, and were as amazed as we were. As for the audience, it was as if they were all holding their breaths, afraid that any sound might break the magic. This strange atmosphere was still in the room when Christine started singing her final Cabaletta:

"I go to him.
Love cannot falter,
Cannot desert;
Though it be shunned,
Or be forgotten,
Though it be hurt
If love be love
It will not alter."

And that's when I knew. The fervor in her voice as she sang those words told me what I should have understood from the beginning of the scene. Christine was once again under Erik's spell. She was singing for him, promising to join him once again, unable to resist the influence he had over her. As she went on singing, an element of extatic resolve came into her voice. It sent shivers down my spine, in part because the performance was so perfect, so intense, but also because I suspected it was, in fact, not an act at all. Her eyes were fixed on a spot in the back of the auditorium, but when I tried to follow her gaze, there was nobody there. I realized then that we could very well lose her again, in a way we already had, but I was too entranced by the music to even care.

"O should I see
My love in need,
It shall not matter
What he may be.
I go to him.
Love cannot falter,
Cannot desert.
Time cannot alter
A loving heart,
An ever-loving heart."

When Christine had ended her final triumphant high C, the audience were at once on their feet, clapping and cheering like mad. I have never experienced anything like it - the reaction was so strong and so immediate. Christine, however, did not seem to take notice of it. She was in a world of her own, flushed, out of breath, intoxicated, hardly aware of what happened around her. I saw her nearly bump into a prop as she left the stage, and she didn't come back to take a bow even though everybody was calling her name. I hurried backstage to talk to her, but she was absentminded and only replied with a few words that everything was fine and that she needed a few minutes' rest.

The second act passed rather uneventfully. When we were not on stage, Little Jammes and I sat in a nearby room, eating fruit and lazily discussing the plot of the opera. Meanwhile, I tried to keep an eye out for Christine, but she spent most of the time, except for the one scene when she was singing, reclining in an armchair and seeping on a glass of water.

"I think I like the advice Nick Shadow gives Tom in this act", Little Jammes mused. "If you really want to be free, act neither according to your passions nor your reason. Do things you don't want to do and don't have to do, and your life becomes exciting. That's kind of deep, isn't it?"

"You think so?" I said, ironically. "I have been doing that all year and it hasn't been all that great, I can tell you."

"Ah, but it gets me a husband!" said Pauline, in her costume as Baba the Turk. She was headed for the stage and already in character. Her long brown beard was a little tangled. Even when we weren't on stage with her, or anywhere near the stage, we could still hear her melodramatic monologues and tantrums echoing throughout the building. Pauline was an excellent bearded lady.

For us in the chorus, there was more to do in the third act. First, we were posing as a crowd at the auction where Tom Rakewell's property is sold after he has married Baba the Turk and then spent all her money on a useless business venture. Later, after the final showdown where the devil reveals his true self to Tom and demands his soul, but Tom wins it back through a game of cards at the cost of his sanity, we were playing the parts of madmen in an asylum. This was, I thought, the best part of it all. A few of us had actually got hold of authentic strait jackets, and I was one of the lucky ones. It is a slightly claustrophobic feeling not to be able to move one's arms, but I was confident that Little Jammes would untie me as agreed once the opera was over.

The singers in the chorus were scattered across the stage, lying down on mattresses or crouching like monkeys, and in the middle of it all, right underneath the ridiculously oversized chandelier, Signor Piangi lay flat on his back, bathing in sweat and singing his final solos, not without some difficulty due to his awkward position. As we were singing the madmen's chorus, the lyrics made me think about Erik and what M. Ivanovich had told me about his sad existence:

"Leave all love and hope behind!
Out of sight is out of mind
In these caverns of the dead.
In the city overhead
Former lover, former foe
To their works and pleasures go
Nor consider who beneath
Weep and howl and gnash their teeth.
Down in Hell as up in Heaven
No hands are in marriage given,
Nor is honour or degree
Known in our society.
Banker, beggar, whore and wit
In a common darkness sit.
Seasons, fashions never change;
All is stale yet all is strange;
All are foes, and none are friends
In a night that never ends."

It was as if we were all singing out Erik's feelings tonight, and I couldn't help but wonder if he had played a part in choosing this particular opera to be performed at the college. This cry of despair, this hopeless darkness, was all too real for that masked man who was living somewhere in the sewers underneath the college. And I knew that he had one wish only - the very thing that played out on the stage this moment.

Christine, in the role of Anne Truelove but very much like herself, came to visit the asylum, to meet her beloved Tom one last time. The two unlucky lovers were reunited in that dark place, and Anne started singing her fiancé to sleep:

"Gently, little boat,
Across the ocean float,
The crystal waves dividing:
The sun in the west
Is going to rest;
Glide, glide, glide
Toward the Islands of the Blest."

Christine was looking at Piangi when she was singing, but it was clear that her sweet words of comfort and forgiveness touched us all deeply. We all had our troubles, big or small. Things we had done wrong or wrongs we had suffered at the hands of others. Dreams that had amounted to nothing, or had been violently shattered. I looked around me at the others on stage, and the faces I could see in the audience. Many were crying, for reasons known only to them. M. Ivanovich took off his glasses and wiped them with great care. Next to him, Carlotta was looking intently at Christine, her face wet with tears. But it was the expression in Carlotta's eyes which surprised me the most. Yes, there was bitterness and the pain of feeling inadequate - a feeling I knew only too well - but above all, there was genuine emotion. It was ironic that Carlotta seemed at last to have learnt to appreciate the true meaning of music, now that she would never be able to produce it herself again.

As for me, I was having great difficulty singing with the chorus. My voice choked as I thought of all the pain of human existence: Christine, who sang like an angel but still grieved the loss of her father. Raoul, who was afraid of losing the girl he loved to a mad genius he had never met. M. Reyer, who worked hard but was never respected. My mother, who had been abandoned by my father and never loved since. The pale man in the second row, who I had been told was the widower of the late Mme Martin. Carlotta, who had lost her voice. I thought about myself, and my injury that would prevent me from ever being a dancer. And Erik! Erik was the most miserable of all. As if responding to all this, Christine's voice rang out in the hall, soothingly, like some divine grace:

"Lion, lamb and deer,
Untouched by greed or fear
About the woods are straying:
And quietly now
The blossoming bough
Sways, sways, sways
Above the fair unclouded brow."

I don't know how I managed to sing my part the next few minutes that followed - I am not even sure that I did sing. What I do know is that Christine finished her last duet with Piangi and left the stage very softly. At that point, Piangi was still lying on his mattress singing, but he might as well have been yodeling, because nobody really listened to him. We were all still in a daze after Christine's final performance. What the Italian singing professor did was of no great interest to any of us. Maybe that is why we didn't see what was about to happen. At least, I didn't. All I know is that suddenly, there was a loud sharp sound followed by a scream and a horrifying crash, and then everything went black.