From Russia with Love

Phantom of the Opera

Nigel Bruce

• 1 min read

The picture below shows the original phantom, the original Angel of Music of the Night, Angel Fernández de Soto, with his white mask-like face. He is the opera ghost and music lover from underground... When he wasn't on public view, his painting hung on the walls of Lloyd-Webber's estate, along with a collection of paintings by Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones. Lloyd-Webber had bought Picasso's 1903 portrait of his friend Angel, seated at a cafe table shrouded in tobacco smoke, in 1995.

Picasso-Angel-Fernandez
Pablo Picasso: "Portrait of Angel Fernández de Soto" (also known as "The Absinthe Drinker") (1903), now in a private collection.

Later, in 2006, an auction at Christie's in New York was dramatically halted amid claims that it was Nazi war loot. A court ruled in ALW's favor but he opted not to try and sell it until 2010.

The musical's masquerade ball of course resembles Woland's Midnight Ball in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.