YMMV / Maskerade

• Complete Monster: Salzella is the deadpan and harsh music director of the Ankh-Morpork Opera House and the false killer Ghost seeking the opera's ruin to satiate his hate and greed. Despising opera, its performers, and its watchers, Salzella is secretly embezzling a massive profit while taking the guise of the Ghost after threatening the mentally challenged real Ghost Walter with murdering his mother. The false Ghost destroys equipment to hide his thefts while murdering or attempting to murder multiple people who might discover his schemes. When Granny Weatherwax uncovers Walter's alter ego, Salzella frames the innocent young man and sends a mob out to murder him. On the verge of exposure, Salzella attempts to drop a massive flaming chandelier during a packed performance to doom hundreds to a fiery death to hide his heinous crimes and escape justice.
• Genius Bonus: Many of the anecdotes told about opera are lightly fictionalized versions of actual opera stories. The "Bouncing Gigli" incident (in which the prima donna was supposed to fling herself off a tower to her death, but a trampoline was used to break the actress's fall, so—well, you can guess) is based on a probably-apocryphal anecdote attributed to various productions of Tosca.
• Harsher in Hindsight: There is a funny scene on the witches' way to Ankh-Morpork where Granny plays poker with Death to save the life of a sick infant. Later, in Carpe Jugulum, Granny is again called out to save a newborn... and this time she fails (or at least, is forced to make a Sadistic Choice between the baby and the mother), becoming the final straw that leads to her Despair Event Horizon.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: During the final opera performance, we're shown Nobby Nobbs and Detritus as undercover-in-plain-sight cops, pretending to be nobility enjoying a night at the Opera. Nobby introduces them as "Count de Nobbes" and "Count de Tritus", resulting in Nanny Ogg turning away before she bursts into laughter at how badly they suck at being undercover. Then, in the very next book Feet of Clay, Nobby is revealed as the last remaining heir of the Earl of Ankh — where bystanders continually comment that he looks and acts just like real royalty. Nobby sucking at trying to act like fake royalty: funny. Nobby subsequently considered to be acting like true royalty by being his usual gross-out self? Hi-larious...
• Tearjerker: A minor one, but after Agnes is humiliated in front of everyone—rejected by André and subjected to some Brutal Honesty from Walter,
  "Agnes turned away, and felt Granny Weatherwax's gaze on her. She was sure it was a mocking gaze."

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