Christine Daaé
Christine Daaé is a fictional character and the female protagonist of Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera and of the various adaptations of the work. Erik, the Phantom of the Opera and Viscount Raoul de Chagny both fall in love with her.
Christine Daaé
Character history[edit]
Biography[edit]
Christine Daaé was born in a town near Uppsala, Sweden. Her mother died when she was six years old. Raised by her father, they travelled through rural Sweden, wandering from fair to fair,[1] where he played the violin and she sang. They were discovered at one of these fairs by Professor Valérius, who took them to Gothenburg and then to Paris, providing for Christine's education.
Christine was extremely close to her father, who told her Scandinavian fairy-tales; the tale of the "Angel of Music" was her favorite. Christine entered the Paris Conservatoire and trained for four years to become an opera singer to please her father and Mamma Valérius, the bedridden wife of the late Professor. However, by the end of the four years, she had lost her passion for singing and the music.
When Christine arrived at the Opéra Garnier, she was described as "sounding like a rusty hinge", but one person found the beauty hidden in her voice. When Erik, the Phantom of the Opera began to tutor her, he told her that he was the "Angel of Music" of whom her father had spoken. She believed him, and he inspired her soul back into her voice. Having been singing small roles with the Opera for some months without making much impression on audiences, Christine had a spectacular success at a gala at the opera in place of the singer Carlotta, who had fallen ill. Christine's singing was described as "seraphic".
Christine became torn between her loyalty and sympathy for her mentor, Erik, and her love for her childhood friend Viscount Raoul de Chagny.
In the Lofficier translation of the novel, Christine's age is given as 15 years old. However, this is a mistranslation of a passage that says her heart was "as pure as that of a 15-year-old". The evidence of Christine's childhood friendship with Raoul, and her studies at the Paris Conservatoire, put her age at 21 years old.
Basis[edit]
Towards the end of his life, Leroux claimed the character was based on a real opera singer "whose real name I hid under that of Christine Daaé".[2] It is likely he was referring to the Swedish singer Christina Nilsson (1843-1921) (sometimes known as "Christine Nilsson"),[3] whose real life heavily reflects details in the fictitious Christine Daaé's history.[4][5] Nilsson, like the fictional Daaé, was born in rural Sweden, and both were discovered by a well-to-do patron performing in a Swedish marketplace: Nilsson singing along to her brother's violin playing in Ljungby, Daaé singing along to her father's violin playing in (fictitious) Ljimby. Both were taken under the protection of a family named "Valerius" in Gothenburg, and both were brought to Paris by their respective patrons for operatic training.[6][7][8] Even the rivalry between the youthful and inexperienced Christine Daaé and the seasoned veteran diva Mme Carlotta, and specifically the replacement of Carlotta with Daaé in the role of Marguerite in Gounod's Faust, loosely reflects the public competition between Christina Nilsson and the older Caroline Miolan-Carvalho over the role at the Paris Opera in 1868-1869,[9][10] even to the point of using ideas and language from contemporary reviews of Nilsson's performances.[11][12]