🎭 The Masquerade scene is set at a dazzling New Year’s ball in the Opéra Populaire, three months after the chandelier crash of Act I. The managers celebrate the Phantom’s supposed disappearance, but their joy collapses when he descends the grand staircase in the chilling costume of the Red Death. He commands that Don Juan Triumphant be staged with Christine in the lead, warning that if defied, “a disaster beyond your imagination will occur.”

👺 For the Phantom, the masquerade is more than a public threat. It is the one night he can walk among others without fear, hidden not by his mask alone but by the fact that everyone wears one. The outcast finds freedom in the crowd, blending in rather than retreating.

🩸 His Red Death costume draws from Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Masque of the Red Death, in which Death itself invades a ball despite every barrier. The Phantom’s entrance is not only theatrical but a warning: art will not obey the managers, and his presence, hidden or visible, will never release its hold.