Hi everyone,

Just wanted to share something with you all.

I went to the Phantom of the Opera today. It must be all 'old hat' to everyone else overseas, but it has only finally reached New Zealand shores. It was one of the things I wanted to see before I lost all my hearing. I never did get to see it before I did. I have always been extremely musical - I used to listen to classical music for hours and hours at a time as soon as I could operate our very old record player - I think I was about 3 at the time. My mother realized I loved music and enrolled me in piano lessons. From then on until I lost my hearing at 31 - music was the most important thing of my life and I had intensive training both privately and at school. Even when I could no longer hear melodies at school - I used to still play and do well at all the theories behind it all. I only fell down when I couldn't 'hear' some of the differences between notes, or if I had to sing a scale. (I could never sing - I'm sure people would pay me to stop!!!) I'll rephrase that - I *can* sing - it just has a very rough passage out. Anyway - I finally got to see the Phantom this afternoon. As I used to know all the Phantom's music before I went deaf, I have a good memory of it, and therefore was able to follow it well with my implant. I have also read the book several times and so could follow the story and understood what was going on at all times.

I have to say that my sympathies lay with the phantom and I found it heartrending at half time. The reason for my sympathy with the Phantom is because he was disfigured, and therefore people shunned him, forcing to live away from the public eye underneath the Paris Opera House. I enjoyed his 'pranks' he played on the opera cast and liked his sense of humour, forever scaring people pretending he was a 'phantom'. Although he committed murder, I still feel more sympathy than horror, as it was society that shunned him and gave him such a sad life in the first place. In some ways society shunned me too when I couldn't hear properly, making it difficult to get promotions at work, and often people would think I was 'stupid' rather than deaf. So you could call my sympathy with the Phantom more of an 'empathy'.

Anyway, at half time, I had to hide my head in the programme as my eyes were filled with tears at the pain in the phantoms voice when he found that Christine had promised herself to Raul. Ah - call me romantic - but I have always got far too involved in music, films, and books. I looked around and honestly, - no one else was as upset as I was - in fact - I seemed to be the only one that was affected. On reflection, I believe the reason I was so emotional was not only because of the story, but simply that I could hear the opera so well, and remember the music. Once again - I really give thanks to the person who invented the cochlear implant - who gave me my second chance of hearing.

Cheers

Robyn in NZ