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Tell Me Why
The Jewish Phantom: Was the "Phantom
of the Opera" inspired by a Jewish figure?
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
AppleTree Editor
I'm a big fan of "Phantom of
the Opera." According to a
rumor I once heard, the lead charac-
ter may have been based on someone
Jewish.
Q
A
Alfred Dreyfus
Fritz Kreisler
1896 at the Paris Opera House, when
a chandelier really did fall and an
audience member was killed.
Similarly, Hogle suggested that the
Phantom was inspired by none other
than Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus, of
course, was the French-Jewish soldier
falsely accused, and then convicted of,
espionage for the Germans. He was
later imprisoned on the notorious
Devil's Island. Among Dreyfus' early
supporters was author Emile Zola,
who denounced French anti-Semitism
and insisted on Dreyfus' innocence —
which meant the case received a great
deal of attention in the press.
In an interview with the University
of Arizona alumni newsletter, Hogle
states, "The whole idea of being casti-
gated as 'other,' even though you're
born European, is a part of the
Phantom and has its origin in both
Dreyfus and Svengali [the manipula-
tive, evil Jewish figure in the popular
novel Trilby, written in 1894 by
George DuMaurier]. The anti-
Semitism of that time becomes a sub-
text for Leroux."
As a journalist, Leroux not only knew
about Dreyfus, he wrote about him,
covering his second trial in 1899. "He
pictures Dreyfus arriving at the court-
room for the first time in a 'phantom
landau,' a carriage," Hogle said. "When
Dreyfus gets out, Leroux describes his
features as 'skeletal and emaciated.'
The face he describes is the face he
will eventually use for the title charac-
ter in The Phantom of the Opera."
Though most know "Phantom of
the Opera" as yet another
Andrew Lloyd Webber musical spec-
tacular, first staged in 1987, the story
actually made its debut as a book.
Gaston Leroux (1868-1927) was a
French journalist — and quite a char-
acter. The son of a store owner, he
received a law degree in 1889. When
his father died, Leroux inherited a for-
tune, which he promptly spent (much
of it on gambling, which became a
lifelong addiction).
Out of money, Leroux turned to
work. He found a job as a theater crit-
ic for L'Echo de Paris, then began
working as a reporter and, later, writ-
ing pulp fiction and mystery novels.
He gained his first real fame in 1907,
when he published The Mystery of the
Yellow Room, in which he introduced
Joseph Rouletabille, a teenage reporter
on the crime beat.
In 1910, Leroux published The
Phantom of the Opera, the sad story of
an insane, disfigured man who haunts a
Paris opera house and falls in love with
a lovely debutante who hopes to find
fame there. Phantom was an immediate
hit, and was first made into a film in
1925, when Lon Chaney starred as the
Phantom. (More recently, a Phantom of
is it that some Jewish
the Opera movie featured the Jewish
families eat a special meal on
Emmy Rossum as Christine).
Saturday nigh6 after Shabbat is
The story has become so popular, in
already over?
fact, that a book has been written
about the phenomenon — and its
This meal is called melavah malka
likely origins.
("accompanying the queen"), and
Jerrold E. Hogle is a professor at the
its origins go back to King David:
University of Arizona and the author
According to custom, King David
of The Undergrounds of the Phantom of asked God when he would die, and
the Opera, published by St. Martin's
God responded: On a Saturday. After
Press.
that, whenever Shabbat was over, King
According to Hogle, much about
David would have a small party in cel-
Leroux's Phantom story is based on
ebration of the fact that he was still
actual events. The most famous of
alive. The Jewish people celebrated
these is the dramatic chandelier scene.
with him, and to this day a number of
In the stage production of Phantom,
Jewish families continue the tradition.
the Phantom himself cuts the chande-
lier after Christine is refused a leading
I say the composer/violinist Fritz
role at the opera. This, Hogle says, was
Kreider was Jewish. My wife
inspired by a tragedy that occurred in
insists he wasn't. Who is right?
A
JN
7/14
2005
34
A
Your wife is — but this is a
complicated story.
Kreisler, born in 1875, was regarded
as one of the leading performers of his
time — and a man who perpetrated
an amazing hoax. But first, to answer
your question about his Jewish roots.
In her 1998 biography, Fritz
Kreisler: Love's Sorrow, Love's Joy
(Amadeus Press), Amy Biancolli dis-
cusses Kreisler's Judaism (and lack
thereof) at length in a chapter titled,
"Kreisler the Catholic, Kreisler the
Jew." In her book, Biancolli refers to
an interview with Franz Rupp,
Kreisler's piano accompanist in the
1930s.
Rupp said he once asked Kreisler's
brother, the cellist Hugo Kreisler,
about their Jewish background. Hugo
responded: "I"m a Jew, but my broth-
er, I don't know."
According to Biancolli, Kreisler's
father, Salomon Severin Kreisler (also
called Samuel), a physician and ama-
teur violinist from Krakow, was likely
Jewish. However, Fritz's mother,
Anna, was Catholic. Another biogra-
phy, Fritz Kreisler, published in 1950
and written by Louis Lochner, says
that that like his mother, Fritz was
raised a Catholic (though some
reports say he wasn't baptized until he
was 12).
In later years, some suggested
Kreisler was particularly quiet on the
subject of his heritage because his wife,
Harriet, was anti-Semitic, asserting,
"Fritz hasn't a drop of Jewish blood in
his veins!"
Another mystery surrounding
Kreisler comes from his musical reper-
toire. For many years, the violinist
claimed to perform "lost classics." He
said he found these works, written by
such famed musicians as Vivaldi, hid-
den away at monasteries and libraries
throughout Europe.
In 1935, when Kreisler turned 60, a
New York Times critic sent his wishes
for a happy birthday and asked, as a
joke, whether the "lost classics" were
actually tunes Kreisler had written
himself. Amazingly, Kreisler respond-
ed, "yes."
The musical world was in shock.
Some denounced him as a liar, but
Kreisler said that so long as people
loved the music, it made no difference
who wrote it. ❑