The fictional piece draws major inspiration from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni, yet the Phantom's opera is depicted as far more bleak and dark.
At the end, it takes a rapid ascent out of misery whirling up into a triumphant and victorious flight as 'ugliness', lifted on the wings of love, dared to look 'beauty' in the face.
After the Phantom is unmasked and his hideousness is revealed, Erik spitefully, and probably sarcastically, remarks that he is the same kind of man as Don Juan, because once a woman sees him, she loves him forever.
The novel's narrator comments that the work was never found in the thirty years since Erik's death and speculates that it may still be in his house next to the subterranean lake beneath the Paris Opera.
[2] In this version, the Phantom forces the opera company to stage his work and orders Christine, a Swedish soprano and his protégée with whom he is in love, to be cast in the lead role.
It is dissonant, with darker tones and key changes closer to modern compositions, which serve to heighten the idea of the Phantom's genius; as a composer, he is portrayed as musically ahead of his time.
As soon as Piangi slips into a hiding place to await the start of the scene, he is quietly strangled by the Phantom, who usurps him and sings "The Point of No Return" with Christine before declaring his love in front of the whole audience.
The opera breaks up into chaos when she exposes his horribly deformed face and Piangi's body is found, leading to the finale of the musical ("Down Once More"/"Track Down This Murderer").
In the film, he performs the number in a red toreador outfit and black eye mask which in turn alerts Christine and the audience to the fact that it is the Phantom singing to her immediately.
In Nicholas Meyer's 1993 novel The Canary Trainer, Sherlock Holmes attempts to recover the Phantom's copy of Don Juan Triumphant from beneath the Paris Opera, but is unable to locate it.