🪦 Gravestone Inscriptions Across Productions

1821–1872 (West End, Royal Albert Hall, World Tour)
1821–1870 (Broadway)
1827–1870 (U.S. Tour)
1817–1870 (Germany)
1841–1870 (Japan, Austria)
1821–1870 (Korea, Busan production observed)

📅 Timeline Inconsistencies

In the Broadway Playbill (2005), the auction prologue is set in 1905, with Raoul described as “about 60.” That would make him 25 in 1870, and Christine around 22–23. In the show, Christine says her father died three years earlier, which would set the action in 1873 and place her at about 25.

Yet this clashes with the libretto date of 1881. If Raoul was truly 25 in 1870, Christine at 25 in 1873 would be unusually old to remain unmarried by 19th-century norms. The timeline feels compressed, suggesting Andrew Lloyd Webber’s team did not strictly codify the chronology.

📖 In Leroux’s novel, Raoul is explicitly 20, which simplifies the math — but the musical’s floating gravestone dates reveal how much productions improvise these details.