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SATURDAY AFTERNOON AT THE OPERA, with guest host
Doug TuckSATURDAY AUGUST 1, 2009 1:00 - 5:00 PM (2:00 - 6:00 AT 2:30 - 6:30 NT)
The Devil offers an aging scientist wealth, knowledge, good times...and a pretty girl (but no shiny silver briefcase) in exchange for his soul!
Charles Gounod's opera FAUST is heard this week in a production from the Vienna State Opera. It stars the celebrated operatic couple of tenor Roberto Alagna (Faust) and soprano Angela Gheorghiu (Marguerite), along with bass Kwangchoul Youn as Méphistophélès.
Guest host for this broadcast (and for the folowing two weeks) is the VO marketing director Doug Tuck. VO has found many innovative ways for opera companies to connect with audience members, and we'll look at some of the social networking trends such as Twitter.And if you want, you can follow us on Twitter.com at
@satoperaFaust
Opera in Three Acts
Music: Charles Gounod
Libretto: in French by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, from Part 1 the play 'Faust" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
World Premiere: Paris, Th&eactue;âtre Lyrique, May 19, 1859
U.S. Premiere: New York, Academy of Music, November 26, 1863 (in Italian)
This production: Vienna State Opera October 11, 2008
CAST & CHARACTERS
Roberto Alagna, tenor
Faust — An old philosopher, frustrated by his life of science. He enters into a pact with the Devil, who promises him youth and pleasure in exchange for his soul.
Kwangchul Youn, bass
Méphistophélès — The Devil; shrewd, conniving, and evil, he delights in destroying men.
Angela Gheorghiu, soprano
Marguerite — A beautiful, innocent, and spiritual young woman. She falls in love with Faust, and is almost destroyed by him.
Michaela Selinger, mezzo-soprano
Siébel — A simple and loyal young villager who has always loved Marguerite.
Adrian Eröd, baritone
Valentin — Marguerite’s brother, a quick-tempered soldier. He loves his sister and is killed while defending her honor.
Alexandru Moisiuc, baritone
Wagner — A student and friend of Valentin.
Janina Baechle, soprano
Marthe Schwerlein — Neighbor and companion to Marguerite.
Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Chorus
Conductor: Bertrand de Billy
SYNPOSIS
ACT I: Alone in his study, the aged Dr. Faust broods that his lifelong search for the meaning of existence has been useless. He raises a goblet of poison to his lips but hesitates when he hears young people outside his window, awakening all the unfulfilled passions of his youth. Cursing life, the philosopher calls on the devil for help. Méphistophélès appears, and Faust tells him he craves youth and pleasure. This can be arranged if Faust will forfeit his soul. Faust hesitates until Méphistophélès produces a vision of the beautiful Marguerite. A magic potion transforms Faust into a handsome young man, and he leaves with Méphistophélès in search of Marguerite and pleasure (“A moi les plaisirs!”).
ACT II: Soldiers and townspeople celebrate the local fair. A young officer, Valentin, asks his friend Siébel to protect his sister Marguerite when he leaves for the wars, and prays to God for his sister’s well-being (“Avant de quitter ces lieux”). Wagner, a student, begins a lively song but is interrupted by Méphistophélès, who sings an homage to greed and gluttony (“Le veau d’or”). He astounds the crowd by creating a fountain of quality wine. When he proposes a toast to Marguerite, Valentin draws his sword, but it shatters. Recognizing Satan, the soldiers hold their sword hilts as crosses beforeMéphistophélès, who leaves in disgust. The townspeople return to their dance. Faust manages to meet Marguerite just before she is lost in the crowd of dancers.
ACT III: Siébel, watched by Faust and Méphistophélès, leaves a humble bunch of flowers at the door of Marguerite’s home, and then leaves. Faust is enchanted with the small, simple house (“Salut demeure”). Méphistophélès returns with a box of jewels that he places near Siébel’s flowers. When Marguerite arrives in the garden, she sings a ballad about the king of Thule, trying to forget about the handsome stranger she met at the fair. She is touched by Siébel’s simple flowers, but is amazed by the box of jewels. Unable to resist the temptation, she tries on all the jewels (“Ah! Je ris”). Méphistophélès flirts with Marthe, the nosy elderly neighbor, so that Faust and Marguerite can be alone. Méphistophélès calls forth a night of stars to help in Faust’s seduction. Marguerite confesses her love for Faust and goes into the house. Méphistophélès mocks Faust and points to Marguerite, now in her window, still enraptured by the night of love. Faust enters the house as Méphistophélès laughs with contempt.
ACT IV Scene 1: Marguerite, pregnant and abandoned by Faust, seeks refuge in a church. Méphistophélès torments her with threats of damnation. She collapses.
Scene 2:Soldiers returning from the war gather in the town square (“Gloire immortelle”). Valentin questions Siébel about Marguerite but receives only vague answers. Faust, repenting his abandonment of Marguerite, arrives with Méphistophélès, who serenades the girl with a lewd ballad (“Vous qui faites”). Valentin comes out of the house and challenges Faust to a duel. At a crucial moment, Méphistophélès intervenes and Valentin is fatally wounded. Marguerite kneels by her brother, but he curses her with his last breath.
ACT V: Marguerite lies sleeping on the floor of her prison cell, where she has been confined for the murder of her illegitimate child. Faust and Méphistophélès appear in the cell to help her escape. At first she is happy to see her lover and recalls their days of happiness together. But she refuses to move, and Faust realizes her mind has darkened. Méphistophélès steps forward to urge the couple to hurry, but Marguerite recognizes his true nature and calls on the angels to save her as she dies (“Anges purs! Anges radieux!). Méphistophélès claims her soul but is overruled by a choir of angels who announce her salvation.
courtesy The Metropolitan Opera
OPERA BACKGROUND
During his tenure of the Prix de Rome, 1839–42, Gounod’s interest in Faust Part I as an operatic subject was aroused by Nerval’s translation of Goethe’s play. He attempted a setting of the church scene as early as 1849, but plans for an opera did not materialize until he met the libretto-writing team of Barbier and Carré in 1855. Carré himself had already written Faust et Marguerite, a three-act play loosely fashioned after Goethe that was moderately successful at the Gymnase-Dramatique in 1850. It provided the basic scaffolding for Gounod’s work, including the idea of enlarged roles for Valentin and Siébel (a minor player in Goethe’s Auerbachs Keller episode). Some elements from Goethe not included by Carré were also brought into the opera, most notably the death of Valentin, the Walpurgisnacht, the prison scene and the apotheosis; Goethe’s play, however, is best not taken into account in critical assessments of Gounod’s opera as a piece of music theatre.
Gounod finished composing Faust in autumn 1858 and it was immediately put into rehearsal at the Théâtre Lyrique. Caroline Carvalho was assigned the role of Marguerite, Emile Balanqué was given Méphistophélès, and Hector Gruyer Faust. Gruyer’s inability to cope with the part became painfully clear in dress rehearsals at the end of February 1859, and he was replaced at that late stage by a veteran from the Opéra-Comique roster, Joseph-Théodore-Désiré Barbot, who went on to give the first performance after having learnt the role in only three weeks. The score that Gounod brought to rehearsals was much longer than the one eventually performed. Several entire numbers were cut before the première: a trio in Act 1 for Siébel, Faust and Wagner; a duet in Act 2 for Marguerite and Valentin; three sets of couplets for one of Marguerite’s girlfriends (Lise), Valentin and Siébel, as well as a chorus of young girls in Act 4; and a large strophic piece for Marguerite in the last act. The couplets for Valentin (‘Chaque jour nouvelle affaire’) were replaced before the première, by the Soldiers’ Chorus, ‘Gloire immortelle de nos aïeux’, the music of which was taken from Gounod’s aborted operatic project Ivan le terrible. During the first rehearsal period the church scene was also transferred from its initial spot after Valentin’s couplets to the end of the fourth act, possibly at the insistence of Carvalho. Gounod tore out of his autograph full score the sections cut before the première, and none of this music was published in his lifetime, save for Siébel’s Act 4 couplets ‘Versez vos chagrins’, which appeared as an extract from the opera shortly after the première. The autographs of the trio, duet and Valentin’s couplets, however, surfaced in public collections during the 1970s.
Faust was a considerable success during its first run at the Théâtre Lyrique in 1859. It was published in June of that year by Antoine Choudens, who helped arrange productions of the work in Strasbourg, Rouen and Bordeaux in 1860. Gounod supplied recitatives to replace the original spoken dialogue for these performances. Productions on many major German stages followed in the next two years; at the Dresden première in August 1861 the work was called Margarete for the first time, a symbolic distancing from Goethe’s play that has endured on German stages. In the second edition of the vocal score (1860), as well as in several early productions, the position of the church scene was moved from the end of the fourth act to before the Soldiers’ Chorus; the composer himself was noncommittal on the placement of the church scene and there is a long record for both solutions. Faust had its Italian première at La Scala in November 1862 and was first produced in England (in Italian) at Her Majesty’s Theatre in June 1863. At the first English-language production in January 1864 (also at Her Majesty’s) Gounod arranged music from the opera’s prelude to create a new solo number for Valentin in Act 2, ‘Even the bravest heart may swell’, to a text by his friend Henry Chorley (the poet Onésime Pradère later supplied the French verse ‘Avant de quitter ces lieux’); the composer made this famous addition reluctantly, however, and the number never appeared in a French vocal score in his lifetime. Following the bankruptcy of the Théâtre Lyrique, Faust had a lavish production at the Op&eacuite;ra in March 1869 with a ballet and a new set of couplets for Méphistophélès supplied by the composer; Christine Nilsson sang Marguerite, Jean-Baptiste Faure was Méphistophélès. It became the most frequently performed opera at that house (new productions followed in 1875, 1893, 1908, 1934, 1956 and 1975) and one of the staples of the international repertory, though since World War II its popularity has waned somewhat.
The case against Faust has been made often and vociferously. Buttressed by views of Marguerite as part society débutante, Méphistophélès as tinged with shades of Leporello, and Faust as little more than lovesick, many have not detected the sort of universality in the characters often admired in other 19th-century masterpieces. As a corollary, the transcendental significance apparently demanded by one of the literary sources (Goethe’s play) has been considered as sacrificed to bathetic sentimentality, with attendant criticism of the musical style as wanting in dramatic chiaroscuro, merely elegant and sometimes even saccharine.
Standing prominently on the other side of the critical ledger is the sheer effectiveness of many scenes on the stage. In a highly personal adaptation of Goethe’s episode of Valentin’s death, Gounod draws a clear and theatrically vivid line between the intolerance of Valentin and the Christian morality of the majority. The church tableau brilliantly captures Marguerite’s isolation against an impersonal background of archaic organ preluding, chant-like choral writing and gothic set. The ringing down of the Act 3 curtain with Méphistophélès’ laughter and a fortissimo orchestral statement of a melody heard earlier only softly, and in a fragmented form, was so impressive that the procedure of the act-terminating peroration was taken up by composers such as Ponchielli and Cilea. The concluding apotheosis works well as a spectacular culmination to the musically uplifting ‘Anges purs, anges radieux’. Gounod is also successful with the more intimate episodes for Marguerite in Act 3. For example, there is a touching spontaneity in Marguerite’s declaimed interruptions in her ballade to wonder about Faust that was new to the French stage in its day and a harbinger of the naturalistic characterization of later figures in French opera such as Massenet’s Manon. The ensuing quartet features a wealth of finely wrought detail, both in orchestration (too often overlooked in critiques of the work) and shaping of the melodic line.
Faust became particularly important to the French musical establishment at the end of the century. A work by a winner of the Prix de Rome that could claim to be thoroughly modern and personal in style at its première, and go on to international stages, was a significant enhancement to the musical prestige of a French operatic culture previously dominated by Meyerbeer and the none-too-easily exportable genre of opéra comique. Its national value was enhanced because, after some initial assessments as ‘Wagnerian’, Gounod’s compositional voice in Faust was heard as important in the definition of a ‘French’ musical aesthetic.
STEVEN HUEBNER
© Oxford University Press 2008
courtesy European Broadcasting Union
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