JENNIFER BASSETT
The Phantom of the Opera
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
Do you believe in ghosts? Of course not. We like to talk about ghosts, and to tell stories about them, but we don’t really believe in them … do we?
In the Paris Opera House in 1880, strange things are happening. One of the dancers sees a shadow in a dark passage. It comes through a wall in front of her, and its face has no eyes. One of the stage workers sees a man in a black evening coat, but he has the head of a dead man, with a yellow face and no nose. People hear a voice in another room, but the room is empty.
It is the Phantom of the Opera …
For Richard
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0X2 6DPOxford University Press is a department of the University of OxfordIt furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,and education by publishing worldwide inOxford New YorkAuckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong KarachiKuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City NairobiNew Delhi Shanghai Taipei TorontoWith offices inArgentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France GreeceGuatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal SingaporeSouth Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine VietnamOXFORD and OXFORD ENGLISH are registered trade marks ofOxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countriesThis edition © Oxford University Press 2008The moral rights of the author have been assertedDatabase right Oxford University Press (maker)First published in Oxford Bookworms 19922 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1No unauthorized photocopyingAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriatereprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproductionoutside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department,Oxford University Press, at the address aboveYou must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirerAny websites referred to in this publication are in the public domain andtheir addresses are provided by Oxford University Press for information onlyOxford University Press disclaims any responsibility for the contentISBN 978 0 19 478915 8A complete recording of this Bookworms edition of The Phantom of the Opera is available on audio CD ISBN 978 0 19 478850 2ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Illustrated by: Martin Cottam Photograph on p1 courtesy of: Corbis (Paris Opera House/Michael Maslan Historic Photographs)Word count (main text): 6230 wordsFor more information on the Oxford Bookworms Library,visit www.oup.com/bookwormse-Book ISBN 978 0 19 478713 0e-Book first published 2012
