Director Bruno Bravo brings to the stage O Fantasma da Ópera [The Phantom of the Opera], a Gothic novel by Gaston Leroux that was first published as a serial between 1909 and 1910. The theatrical appropriation of non-dramatic literature is a recurring practice with the Primeiros Sintomas company, as their productions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (2002) or Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio (2016) show. But the ambition of that approach is amplified here. Bruno Bravo brings to the house of the theatre contributions from various performative disciplines, organising a meeting between live music and movement, between songs and the amazing machinery of a stage, with its pageant of actors and characters. An undisciplined dialogue that echoes the spirit of the Paris Opera, the locus horrendus of O Fantasma da Ópera, a building where theatre, dance and music shows are presented. A phantom haunts its backstage areas, staircases and dressing-rooms, grid and boxes, disturbing everyone with a series of deaths, accidents, spells. Erik is the nom de guerre of this disfigured, flesh-and-blood ghost who falls in love with the voice of Christine Daaé, a young singer; the two are the protagonists of one of the most tragic love stories of all times.