She believes the voice belongs to The Angel of Music – a character from a story she was told as a child – and, having confirmed this, the voice offers her singing lessons. Telling the tale of the Paris Opera House and it’s resident phantom, the novel follows the talented Christine Daae who, shortly after being cast in the opera hears a beautiful, unearthly voice sing to her.

And so it was when on a recent holiday to Hvar that I found myself wandering around Split en route back to England that I stumbled across a book shop when exploring the underground market and consequently bought my second copy of Gaston Leroux’s most famous novel. I first bought a copy aged 19 from a used book shop in Koh Phangnan in Thailand, though it inevitably got left on a bus when I was just a chapter or two in travelling north to Chang Mai. With The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, however, I first watched the film, before seeing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage production as a 21st birthday present from my Uncle Rory before only just having read the book many years later after first having come across the Parisian ghost story. While there are rare occasions when I’ve watched a film that lives up to the book on which its based, more often than not they’re a huge disappointment, and I’m left wishing I hadn’t bothered. On the whole, I tend to read books prior to watching their screen adaptations, often avoiding the film altogether.

The phantom of the opera book cover