Review: Phantom of the Opera

Today I saw the Phantom of the Opera with my wonderful girlfriend at the Fox Theater downtown. It was very good, and it is the first time I have seen any incarnation of Phantom, which got me thinking about the plot. I can't figure out if the phantom was intended to be a sympathetic character or not.

[Warning! Spoilers! If you haven't seen the play and you plan on it don't read any further!]

Throughout the play we see the phantom drop chandeliers precariously close to people, hang folks from the rafters, kill people and then masquerade as them, and threaten total disaster. At the same time, however, he is courting Christine and bemoaning his fate as a "freak" with an altered face. Are we the audience supposed to feel sorry for his physical plight despite the fact that he is a completely despicable character?

Elizabeth claims that on an emotional level she feels sorry for him, but I just can't look past the fact that while he is in love with Christine he kills at least two other people and threatens to kill the man she is in love with. At the end, the phantom lets him go and allows Christine to go with him and be with the man she really wants to be with, but he never says "gee, maybe I shouldn't have killed those two other people". How noble is it really for him to not hang Raoul and keep Christine trapped as his love slave in the grotto for the rest of her life? Isn't not hanging someone behavior we expect from people, not behavior that we normally view sympathetically? If anyone has any thoughts, email me and I'll post them to the site.