Selección Terror: Monstruo en la Ópera

Museum Catalog Note "Monstruo en la Ópera," by Curtis Garland (1975), is a Gothic horror novelette dedicated to Gaston Leroux's *The Phantom of the Opera*. The narrative opens with soprano Shawn Francis discovering something horrifying in her dressing room after a triumphant opera premiere, her scream suggesting supernatural terror. The story then shifts to London's *Illustrated Police News*, where young reporter Dennis Maitland writes sensationalist crime coverage he despises. He encounters Basil Cox, an acerbic music critic for the *Globe*, who requests archived materials about Jeanette Dauphin—"The Golden Nightingale"—a famous singer mysteriously murdered in the opera house months earlier. Her killer, the obsessed Vernon Stensgaard, is serving a twenty-year sentence despite claims of innocence. As Maitland prepares to send his current article to press, his editor Russell Scott arrives with an urgent telegraph requiring immediate coverage of a breaking story, cutting short Maitland's evening. The narrative combines operatic mystery with crime journalism, establishing an atmosphere of theatrical danger and professional ambition set in Victorian London.