The Shah-in-Shah commissions Erik, who proves himself a gifted architect, to construct an elaborate palace in Mazenderan. The Shah orders the Persian to fetch Erik and bring him to the palace. His reputation for these skills and his unearthly singing voice spreads quickly, and one day a fur trader mentions him to theShah of Persia. During his time with the tribe, Erik becomes a great illusionist, magician, and ventriloquist. Most of the character's history is revealed by a mysterious figure, known through most of the novel as The Persian or the Daroga, who had been a local police chief in Persia, following Erik to Paris other details are discussed in the novel's epilogue (e.g., his birthplace is given as a small town outside of Rouen, France).īorn hideously deformed, he is a "subject of horror" for his family and as a result, he runs away as a young boy and falls in with a band of Gypsies, making his living as an attraction in freak shows, where he is known as "le mort vivant"("the living dead"). Erik refers to himself as "The Opera Ghost", "The Angel of Music", and attends a masquerade as the "Red Death" (evidently Erik is familiar with Poe's famous short story The Masque of the Red Death (1842)). Leroux sometimes calls him "the man's voice". The text also reveals that "Erik" was not, in fact, his birth name, but one that was given or found "by accident", as Erik himself says within the work. Erik himself laments the fact that his mother was horrified by his appearance (causing him to run away from home at a young age), and that his father, a true master mason, never even saw him. In the original novel, few details are given regarding Erik's past, although there is no shortage of hints and implications throughout the book.
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