(dramatic instrumental music)
In the French capital of Paris,
certain places are bound in unexplained phenomena.
(thunder rumbling)
This is the case of the rooms of the Palais Garnier,
better known as the Paris Opera,
which is said to be cursed,
and numerous strange and disturbing incidents
have been recorded in them
to such an extent that many people claim
they're the work of a ghost,
the most famous ghost on earth,
the Phantom of the Opera.
(speaking in a foreign language)
Does the Phantom of the Opera still exist?
Was there ever a Phantom?
Is it just a legend?
What are the established facts?
If we want to discover the truth,
then we must investigate here in Paris.
(dramatic instrumental music)
I'm Jean-Marc Leri.
I've devoted my life to understanding Paris's history,
studying its secrets, and wandering its maze of streets.
The city holds many centuries old mysteries.
Often these cases are dismissed as occult phenomena,
myths, legends, or popular beliefs.
Things have happened here, though.
There are facts,
consistencies, and bonafide witnesses.
Historians, scientists, and investigators of all sorts
have been unable to solve them.
It is time to reveal the most plausible theories
and to get as close as possible to the truth.
Here's Paris as you've never seen it before.
(gentle instrumental music)
Fire after fire,
ghosts, assassinations,
are the opera houses of Paris cursed?
The most famous among them, the Paris Opera,
is brimming with secrets.
Faust, (speaking in a foreign language),
these walls resonant with the voices of renowned singers
who have performed here.
The shadows of past ballerinas still glide
down the grand staircase.
The Palais Garnier connects to the underworld
via its basements peopled by ghosts
and to the heavens through its gilded domes and sun gods.
The famous novel by Gaston Leroux,
The Phantom of the Opera,
was published in 1910.
It was inspired by strange events
which are said to have taken place
in the second half of the 19th century
within the walls of the Paris Opera,
and that wasn't down to chance.
Since the 17th century,
nearly all of Paris's opera houses
had been damaged or destroyed by fire.
There was talk of a curse.
To solve these mysteries,
we must examine the nooks and crannies
of the Paris Opera,
plunge into the bowels of this temple of music and ballet
in the dark of night,
mingle with its shadows,
soak up its nocturnal voices,
when all around is silence and slumber,
wander its galleries and corridors,
and pass through its secret entrances.
We must enter the depths of time
in an attempt to reveal the truth about the curse
of the Paris opera houses.
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(upbeat instrumental music)
(singing in a foreign language)
The Paris Opera is one
of the French capital's most famous landmarks.
It was constructed between 1860 and 1875,
and it was an extraordinary work site.
Around it, a whole new district of Paris
was growing up with other prestigious buildings.
The contract was awarded to the young,
unknown architect Charles Garnier.
(gentle instrumental music)
The Palais Garnier covers a surface area
of about 11,000 square meters
with an Italian style auditorium
containing 2,051 seats in red velvet,
salons, rehearsal rooms, studios,
public spaces,
and the (speaking in a foreign language).
The Palais Garnier is its rotunda,
its grand staircase,
and its 30 meter high marble decorated nave.
In the auditorium, the bronze and crystal chandelier,
with its 340 lights,
weighs almost eight tons.
Garnier reintroduced color into architecture
with marbles in tones of yellow, gray,
violet, pink, and scarlet tinged with ochre.
In the auditorium,
red is the dominant color
and would later become so in many other opera houses.
(speaking in a foreign language)
When you stroll through the Opera,
the Palais Garnier,
whether it's day or night,
there's always an eerie feeling.
It's like the building has taken you over,
maybe more so at night.
The Opera provokes fantasies.
It's a maze with secret corridors
and hidden staircases.
You walk along its corridors,
and you unexpectedly come out into the main auditorium.
Then all that happened there,
all those who passed through,
it has a very old world, shrouded,
mysterious atmosphere.
It plunges you into the heart of the 19th century
when we're in the 21st century.
Plus it's a building where you always feel
like you're on stage.
You walk in, climb the grand staircase,
see the balconies,
so it's you who are on stage,
and you soon feel like you're the star of the day.
(crowd mumbling)
(crowd applauding)
For a long time,
the aristocracy and the middle classes
went to the theater to see operas and ballets.
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Before the magnificent Palais Garnier,
there were opera houses
on the Square Louvois,
and in the Rue Le Peletier.
Down the centuries,
a number of disturbing, terrible,
and yet curious events would take place on these sites,
such as deaths and fires.
Some even began to say that all of Paris's opera houses
were cursed.
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The opera hall on the Square Louvois
opened in 1791 after the fire ravaged the one
in the Palais Royal.
On Sunday, February 13th, 1820,
tragedy happened.
The Duc de Berry, the second son of the Comte d'Artois,
the future king Charles the 10th,
attended the opera accompanied by his wife.
When he left, he was assassinated.
The Louvois Opera House was closed down and demolished.
In 1760, the Salle Favart
on the present day Place Boieldieu
became home to the Opera Comique.
On January 15th, 1838,
after a performance of Don Giovanni,
one of the auditoriums went up in flames.
(fire roaring)
Rebuilt in 1840, it was once again ravaged by fire
on May 25th, 1887,
claiming the lives of 84 people.
In 1821, the troupe of the Paris Opera
moved into the Salle Le Peletier.
A new opera house, another drama some 30 years later
with an assassination attempt
on the Emperor Napoleon the Third
just outside the building.
(gun firing)
(horse whinnying)
The imperial couple escaped unharmed,
but eight other people were killed
and 150 wounded.
On November 15th, 1862, another drama unfolded
when the tutu of the ballerina, Emma Livry,
suddenly caught fire while rehearsing onstage
at the Salle Le Peletier.
She died from complications from her burns
eight months later at the age of 22.
Worse still, on October 28th, 1873,
the same Le Peletier Opera House
was destroyed by a gigantic fire.
(fire crackling)
The fire raged for more than 24 hours,
and the theater finally burned to the ground.
100 people lost their lives.
At the time, the causes were unknown.
The Palais Garnier was inaugurated on January 5th, 1875,
yet another new opera house,
but the fires continued.
On January 6th, 1894,
fire tore through the warehouse
that stored all the scenery of the Paris Opera
and the Opera Comique.
(bell ringing)
In 1928, the curtains and drapes
of the (speaking in a foreign language)
went up in flames and were destroyed.
Another fire broke out on December 23rd, 1950,
but fortunately, it was extinguished within 15 minutes.
A bit much, don't you think?
(gentle instrumental music)
What should we make of these coincidences?
Maybe Paris's opera houses are cursed.
Why such a long series of fires?
The legend of the Phantom of the Opera
was born from one of these fires,
the one at the Salle Le Peletier.
In his book The Phantom of the Opera,
Gaston Leroux tells of a young pianist
whose face suffers severe burns.
His fiance, a ballerina at the conservatory,
dies in the fire.
Inconsolable and disfigured,
the pianist seeks refuge in the basements
of the Paris Opera, then in full construction.
He finally dies there,
only to reappear later,
spreading fear through the underground world
of the vast theater.
(film reel rolling)
(gentle instrumental music)
The legend of the Phantom was born,
and it would continue into the 20th century.
Leroux's character is now part of our collective memory,
and numerous adaptations for film and stage
have been produced.
This 1925 American silent movie
is a classic of the early horror genre.
The sets were entirely studio built.
Like in Leroux's book,
secret passageways, trap doors,
and other underground conduits were exaggerated.
The actor, Lon Chaney, a huge star in the 1920s
and known as the man of thousand faces,
created a phantom as moving
as he was terrifying.
(electricity whirring)
(gentle instrumental music)
Other movies followed,
a series, a ballet, cartoons,
and of course, the mega-hit stage musical.
(speaking in a foreign language)
The Phantom totally personifies
the Paris Opera.
If you stroll around the public spaces
and the corridors backstage with your bunch of keys,
you're sure to be asked by a tourist,
"Where is the Phantom?"
I tell them, there is a Phantom.
I'm not sure he's around today,
but wait by box number five.
You might catch a glimpse of him.
Box five, the Phantom's box,
is one of the most visited
because you can see it from the auditorium
adjacent to the imperial box.
But there is more than just the Phantom.
In his novel, Gaston Leroux evokes other incidents
supposedly true and equally disturbing,
said to have occurred inside the Palais Garnier.
They would further reinforce the belief in the curse
of Paris's opera houses.
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On May 20th, 1896, the counterweight
of the huge, monumental crystal chandelier gave way,
sending it crashing into the audience below
during a show.
(crowd yelling)
Many people were injured,
and one woman was killed.
She was sitting in seat number 13.
A short time after, a student ballerina
took a fatal fall from the 13th step
of the grand staircase.
Could it be a case of unlucky 13
because the Palais Garnier
was the 13th opera house to be built in Paris?
There was also talk of a stage hand found dead
after hanging himself,
and a corpse discovered in the Paris Opera basement
during the Paris Commune in 1871,
and the (speaking in a foreign language) river
which supposedly flows under the opera
and the mysterious lake concealed
beneath the Palais Garnier.
Another disturbing event is described by Leroux.
The managers of the Paris Opera at the time
received a letter written in red ink,
signed by a certain O.G.
The individual was making a number of demands,
including a payment of 20,000 francs every month
and that box five should be reserved for him alone.
The legend seemed to be taking over the building itself.
O.G., for opera ghost?
Let's recap.
Fires, strange incidents,
and of course, the story of the ghost or phantom,
how can we disentangle truth from falsehood?
Are the phantom and the other disturbing incidents
all products of Gaston Leroux's imagination,
or was he inspired by real events?
The opera ghost really existed.
He was not, as was long believed,
a creature of the imagination of the artists,
the superstition of the managers,
or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains
of the young ladies of the ballet,
their mothers, the box keepers,
the cloak room attendants,
or the concierge.
Yes, he existed in flesh and blood,
although he assumed the complete appearance
of a real phantom,
that is to say, a spectral shade.
(speaking in a foreign language)
Gaston Leroux's novel
is like braided hair with three strands.
There is the architecture of the Palais Garnier,
which is magnificently described by Gaston Leroux,
who was a journalist by trade,
and what a journalist,
with precise, well informed,
detailed language,
but always beautiful prose.
The second strand is the love story
with two men in love with the same young soprano,
and the third strand is the terrifying and dark tail
that Leroux thought up of the Phantom
and the places he frequents inside the Palais Garnier.
Leaving behind them the broad staircase
which leads from the lobby outside the managers' offices
to the stage and its dependencies,
they crossed the stage,
went out by the subscribers' door,
and entered the house
through the first little passage on the left.
Then they made their way through the front rows of stalls
and looked at box five on the grand tier.
They could not see it well
because it was half in darkness
and because great covers were flung
over the red velvet of the ledges
of all the boxes.
They were almost alone in the huge, gloomy house,
and a great silence surrounded them.
(speaking in a foreign language)
It's so well constructed,
so well written.
The psychology of the characters is spot on,
and what we can call a report on the Palais Garnier,
one of the strands of the book,
is so precise and written with such love.
I think he has a lot of fun
at the Paris Opera
because Gaston Leroux arrived in Paris aged 18
to study law and became a great fan of the theater.
With one accord,
they raised their eyes to the ceiling
and uttered a terrible cry.
The chandelier, the immense mass of the chandelier,
was slipping down, coming toward them.
At the call of that fiendish voice,
released from its hook,
it plunged from the ceiling
and came smashing into the middle of the stalls
amid a thousand shouts of terror.
A wild rush for the doors followed.
The papers of the day state that there were numbers wounded
and one killed.
(gentle instrumental music)
(speaking in a foreign language)
The chandelier did not fall down.
In May, 1896,
one of its counterweights came loose
and hit the fourth floor boxes,
and yes, one person was killed
and several others injured.
So here Gaston Leroux took a real event
and spiced it up,
but he was very honest.
In his footnotes,
he thanked the real people.
"I was told this story by Monsieur
(speaking in a foreign language)
"and I thank him for bringing
"this incident to my attention."
The story is totally untrue,
but he makes it sound true
by mentioning Monsieur (speaking in a foreign language),
and everyone at the time knew
Monsieur (speaking in a foreign language)
because he was a very popular manager of the opera.
So even if you don't believe in ghosts,
you start to doubt.
Maybe it is true.
Everything is true,
and everything is false in The Phantom of the Opera,
just like in real life.
(gentle instrumental music)
Gaston Leroux exaggerated events
and added a touch of mystery where there was none,
but what of the other legends
involving the Paris Opera?
Plenty has been said about the mysterious lake beneath it,
but in fact, it's an artificial pool,
built by Garnier to consolidate the structure,
as the land is marshy.
As for the (speaking in a foreign language) river,
it has never flowed under the building,
and corpses were never found in the basements
during the Paris Commune,
even though confrontations did take place there,
and finally, the series of fires afflicting
a large number of Paris's opera houses.
How can that be explained?
(speaking in a foreign language)
Why do theaters catch fire often
and everywhere?
Firstly, due to the lighting,
which was by naked flame,
originally candlelight and then gas lamps.
The scenery was held up with ropes,
the dangling end of which could swing into a flame
and catch light,
and as the stage is an empty cube,
fire spreads quickly,
climbs into the areas above,
creating a genuine furnace.
So in the 19th century,
they gradually developed ways to choke fires,
firstly by fireproofing the scenery and costumes.
They were coated with a kind of liquid
called the Cartonon system,
after its inventor.
It was very effective,
but it made fabrics very stiff.
Then the fire curtain was invented.
This came down to cut off the auditorium from the stage
because if you can't control an onstage fire,
it will quickly spread to the auditorium
where hundreds of people would scramble to the exits.
There were no fire exits back then,
trampling over the other spectators.
So theater fires were very cruel,
often resulting in a lot of deaths.
(gentle instrumental music)
So we've also solved the mystery
of the fires,
but it would be too easy to think
that everything can be explained.
Still today, reality can catch up with us,
and here, this was no fiction,
legend, rumor, or exaggerated eye witness account.
This was a real event and recent,
and the coincidence is disturbing.
On September 25th, 2016,
the Theatre Mogador caught fire.
It started in the basement
and ravaged a large part of the stage
and its scenery.
The French version of the hit musical
The Phantom of the Opera
was due to open a few weeks later in October.
The premier was postponed for several months
before the show was canceled completely.
The Phantom of the Opera had never
been performed in France,
and it still hasn't to this day.
The opera houses of Paris,
the city of light,
will keep their secrets for centuries to come.
The Palais Garnier will remain a theater of fantasies,
a play of shadows and desires,
eternal like its Phantom.
How can we now pass the Paris Opera
without thinking of Gaston Leroux's character?
And how can we not wish to believe
that the Phantom is real
and still exists today?
(dramatic instrumental music)
(wind blowing)
(gentle instrumental music)
The curse of the Paris opera houses,
the presence of the Phantom of the Opera,
it's all now part of the French capital's history,
but Paris has other mysteries.
The clues and keys to these enigmas are to be found
in old books,
lost in the capital's libraries,
in the city's streets, or beneath its buildings,
by the light of a candle,
or in the dead of night,
by cross checking documents, archives, and records.
Paris has not yet revealed all of its secrets.
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