Faust could once make the claim of being the most popular opera
in the world. But that was then, this is now, and it just ain’t
so no more. Even in its day it had a lot of critics, mostly
those of Germanic stripe who hated the idea of a French composer
making such a frothy musical mixture of the revered Goethe’s
greatest work. In my view opera picks up where words leave off,
and Gounod offers significant advantages over the written text,
as all great operas do, enabling us to probe the depths of
feelings and emotions only implicit in the very interpretable
prose of the finest of authors.
Yet Faust failed over
time; even though the Metropolitan Opera opened with Faust in
its new house in 1883, at that time the opera was in its last
throes. In the twentieth century the work became somewhat passé,
probably because the Romantic quagmire that gave birth to it
became increasingly difficult in the industrial age to put on
stage without inspiring incredulity or laughter. Musically it is
still a marvelous piece, one of the most lyrical and blazingly
tuneful works ever composed, rife with dramatic possibilities
just waiting for the right director—of which there have been
very few willing to try it—to give it wings.
This
production, another Met Live special broadcast worldwide, is
definitely not the one to resurrect the work. The Met is not
entirely at fault as the production is also from the English
National Opera. What we have is Faust as a tormented Oppenheimer
character ready to kill himself because of his conflicts over
launching us all into the nuclear age, saved by the suave and
urbane Mephistopheles by placing the anti-hero back into his
youth, and the arms of Marguerite. Because of this we are
immersed in a set that consists essentially of a bare-boned
laboratory of utmost banality and depression, utterly devoid of
any kind of romantic passion, color, and eccentricity. The
concept in and of itself is really not a bad one; the opera does
need some kind of updating to make it more applicable to the
world we live in, otherwise it can degenerate into a simple
fairy tale. But these sets, though technologically
sophisticated, are brutal, ugly, monochromatic, and simply
offensive to the eyes and at complete incongruence with Gounod’s
effervescent score.
If you close your eyes however, you
may experience a little of what such an all-star cast is able to
provide. While many have criticized Kaufmann’s neo-French
diction, they might be reminded that this is music and not a
French lesson, and there is simply no more versatile tenor
performing before the public today. His emotive preferences add
light to the production, his acting first-rate. Pape’s
Mephistopheles, as you might expect, is supremely domineering
even though it is done with a sort of nightclub-bouncer
strong-arming of a man used to getting his way—he is the devil,
after all. The acting of Marina Poplavskaya is superb on all
accounts; I just wish she would bring more of that passion into
her singing, which though generally fine lacks the last degree
of warmth. What comes out of her mouth doesn’t always match the
expression on her face. I don’t want to be too hard on her
though, and the role is a bear—even though it fits the voice
quite nicely—and this one is certainly worthy.
If this
was an SACD I would most likely add a star to the total in the
heading (although the lossless DTS soundtrack is fine); but it’s
not, and the staging is such that the prospect of returning to
it is not a pleasant one. Director Des McAnuff needs to rethink
the visuals behind the otherwise interesting concept.