Tag Archives: museums

Finding the Phantom in Paris

Did you know that the Phantom of the Opera was based off a real accident at an opera house in Paris? In 1896, a counterweight for the grand chandelier in the Palais Garnier broke free and fell, killing a worker in the process. That incident and the theater itself served as inspiration for Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera (and the subsequent Broadway adaptation by Andrew Lloyd Webber.