Erique Claudin has been a violinist at the Paris Opera House for twenty years.Recently however, he has been getting pains in the fingers of his left hand,
which affect his violin-playing.
He is dismissed because of this, and the owner of the opera house assuming that he has enough money to support himself with. However, Claudin has spent it all by anonymously funding the music lessons of Christine Dubois, a young soprano whom he has secretly fallen in love with. When he runs out of money, Claudin attempts to sell the concerto that he's been working on all his life. After submitting it and not hearing a response, he becomes worried and returns to the publishers, Pleyel & Desjardins, to ask about it. No one there knows what happened to it, and do not seem to care.Mistakenly believing that his precious concerto has been stolen from Pleyel, Claudin kills the music publisher he holds responsible.
Terrified, the publisher's mistress throws a pan full of acid into Claudin's face. Screeching and wailing, he dashes out the door clutching his face. Now being hunted down by the police for murder, he hides in the sewers beneath the Paris Opera House. He begins his reign of terror on those who stand in the way of Christine's success.After the crashing of the chandelier, Erique takes Christine down to his lair, pursued by the police. Christine pulls off his mask and sees what has happened to Erique. At that moment, Raoul and Anatole break in, and fire at the phantom. The shot misses, and causes the entire lair to cave in, as the two men and Christine escape. Back at the Phantom's lair, one of the final scenes shows Erique's mask propped against his violin, accompanied by rocks shifting in the background, perhaps meaning that Erique survived, and left the opera behind him.
