The Phantom of the Opera

Something haunts the Paris Opera House. Stagehands whisper about a ghost in Box Five; the managers receive polite letters demanding a salary; and a young soprano named Christine Daaé suddenly sings like an angel, coached by a voice that speaks to her through the walls of her dressing room. When a chandelier crashes into the audience and Christine vanishes mid-performance, her childhood sweetheart Raoul descends into the cellars beneath the Opera, five levels down, past the underground lake, into the domain of the masked genius who built it all.

Leroux frames the tale as investigative journalism, complete with witness testimony and documents, which gives the melodrama a strange, delicious plausibility. And his Phantom (Erik, composer, architect, ventriloquist, monster) is a far stranger and sadder creature than any adaptation lets on. Gothic romance, mystery, and horror in one, with an ending more affecting than you expect.

At roughly 84,100 words, The Phantom of the Opera runs about 9½ hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The Phantom of the Opera is in the public domain, so the complete text is free on Project Gutenberg and LoudReader has the entire Project Gutenberg catalog built in. To listen:

1. Download LoudReader for Mac or iPhone (free, no account).
2. Search for “The Phantom of the Opera” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

LoudReader reads with natural offline voices, so the whole book works on a plane or underground. It is fully on-device and private, your library never leaves your device. Listening is unlimited on the free tier.