PHANTOM Question

Whenever I watch the film version of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, I get the impression that the Phantom actually wrote the song "Masquerade". Do any of you guys agree, or would any of you guys be able to confirm/deny this for sure? I feel as though the lyrics would be appropriate coming from him, especially:
"Masquerade, paper faces on parade!/Hide your face so the world will never find you."
It is also explained that he is a musical genius, and a wonderful composer, so even if "Don Juan Triumphant" was not his best work-except for "The Point of No Return"-but he meant to make that piece the best because he and Christine would sing it together, I feel like being a great composer could imply that he could write a wide range of different sounding songs.

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I could very well be wrong and will gladly bow to those who know the show by heart.

But I never took that song to be a "performance" written by any of the characters. To me, it's the chorus singing to set the scene and the popular sentiment, just as nobody actually writes the title number of OKLAHOMA!

In the context of the show, the characters aren't performing anything. They're celebrating at a masquerade ball, and because it's a musical, the celebration just happens to be in song form.

"In regards to the phantom's talents, I think he wrote Don Juan badly on purpose to annoy the performers and the managers"

In terms of the world the musical exists in Don Juan Triumphant is not supposed to be "bad," just written in a new musical language that supposedly pushes the boundaries of the operatic art form. French audiences, and I assume artists, didn't always take kindly to new styles. They hated the original production of Carmen and the premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring caused a full on riot at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.

Lloyd Webber was more likely trying to imply that the Phantom was writing one of those types of works which would change and influence the future of composing, not that it was badly written to annoy people (the Phantom is clearly far above doing something just to annoy somebody, especially by that point in the show).

As far as "Masquerade," since the idea of the Phantom building the music box comes from Mr. Schumacher and is not mentioned anywhere in the script for the stage show I would argue more along the lines of it being a piece that is already popular amongst the Parisian elite, hence it appearing at the celebration and in a music box. Though I would go more with what boggess said in that it's not meant to be viewed as a piece that everyone is performing, it's just the convention of musical theatre that everybody is singing to express their joy and celebration.