Check out our Phantom of the Opera inspired art for sale on Red Bubble! "Masquerade... paper faces on parade. Masquerade! Hide your face so the world will never find you! The Phantom of the Opera (French: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) is a serial novel by Gaston Leroux that was originally published in 1909 to 1910. Pierre Lafitte initially released it as a novel in April 2010. The novel was inspired in part by historical events at the Paris Opera throughout the nineteenth century, as well as a fictitious story about Carl Maria von Weber's 1841 performance of Der Freischütz, which