Box 5 and the Phantom of the Opera

Now that you've reached Box 5, feel free to sit on the red chair in front of it while you listen. If your legs are tired and the chair is free, take a rest.

A box is the most expensive kind of seat in an opera house, a private box that usually seats no more than five people. Today the front-row seats on the ground floor, close to the stage, are the most popular and priciest. Back then, though, boxes were a way of displaying class differences, and they cost far more. While the upper classes lounged in their boxes, commoners downstairs sat packed in tightly, bolt upright, to watch the show.

Of all the boxes here, Box 5 is the most famous, because it is the reserved seat of Erik, the main character of The Phantom of the Opera. Erik sends the theater's managers a threatening letter saying that Box 5 is his and that if they don't keep it empty, he will take revenge. Author Leroux is said to have drawn on a real incident: in the late 19th century, an anonymous person told the theater's board to reserve Box 5 for them every night and to pay them a salary of 20,000 francs a month.

Erik's own story is also said to be based on real-life tales. Leroux read a newspaper article about a man's body found beneath the Opéra Garnier, which reminded him of a rumor about a pianist. The opera house that stood before the Opéra Garnier was destroyed in a great fire, and the fire reportedly killed a ballerina and a pianist who were engaged to be married. A rumor then spread that the pianist, his face burned, had become a ghost living beneath the Opéra Garnier and composing songs for his fiancée, and that this embittered ghost was behind the theater's various accidents. Inspired by articles and rumors like these, Leroux is said to have created Erik, a brilliant musician with a disfigured face who lives under the theater.