On the aged, dusty stage of the Paris opera house, the auctioneer's assistant holds high in the air an antique musical box with the figure of a money clanging a pair of cymbals. As the tune wafts through the belly of the dark opera house, the winning bid is placed by the sickly Vicomte de Chagny. The mechanical monkey finishes its ditty just as it's handed to his new owner, and locks eyes with the old, melancholy, soul that seems already familiar with it.
With the auction winding down, the auctioneer turns his attention to the star item, an enormous chandelier, still in need of a great deal of repair, with hundreds, if not thousands, crystals hanging limply to its limbs:
"Some of you may recall the strange affair of the Phantom of the Opera, a mystery never fully explained. We are told, ladies and gentlemen, that this is the very chandelier that figures in the famous disaster. Our workshops have repaired it and wired parts of it for the new electric light, so that we may get a hint of how it may look when reassembled. Perhaps we may frighten away the ghost of so many years ago with a little illumination, gentlemen?"
Lights, flying cobwebs, the chandelier swings towards the ceiling, the organ blasts, and we are launched violently backwards in time to the height of two primes: that of the opera house, and of it's Phantom.
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