La Damnation de Faust is about alchemist Dr. Faust, whose unavailing search for the meaning of life brings him into league with the devil. The fact that the opera calls for many unusual sets and makes many jumps in time and space, requires extraordinary stagecraft and creativity. With one wave of a hand, Méphistophélès takes Faust to a pub full of drunken soldiers, to the lovely banks of the river Elbe, and to the home of beautiful Marguerite, who becomes his love. In the end, Faust’s contract with the devil takes him to hell, while Marguerite’s innocent soul ascends to heaven.
The 1846 debut in Paris ended as a financial and artistic disaster for Berlioz. During his lifetime, Berlioz’s monumental musical experiment was never performed in its entirety again. Later the “Dramatic Legend in Four Parts” would become famous in concert performances, but wasn’t mounted on stage very often. The last performance at the Met was in 1906.
Under the direction of Robert Lepage, the Met has restaged the piece. Lepage’s Canadian troupe “Ex Machina” (known for the shows of “Cirque du Soleil”) of acrobats and technicians joined the Met ensemble to create an opulent multimedia experience, enriching the opera with cinematic and circus aesthetics.
Like Berlioz, who worked for almost 20 years on his Faust adaptation, Lepage has directed and reworked his Damnation several times: in a co-production at the Japanese Saito Kinen Festival (1999), and at the Ope’ra National de Paris (2001, 2004, and 2006). The Met’s new version is thus re-conceived and refined.
Lepage accompanies swiftly changing scenery with computer animated projections, people walk up the wall, or magically fly through the air on invisible ropes. The travelogue becomes a dream journey whose ever-changing pictures support the flow of the music.
The interaction between actors and stage techniques reaches its poetic peak in the Elbe scene. The actors, simultaneously filmed, and with their images projected on the lower half of the set, appear reflected on the water, gently distorted by waves.
When Méphistophélès capsizes the boat and Faust falls into the water, the latter gets lost in a dream of Marguerite, meant by the devil to bedazzle him. Fantastic (in the truest sense) and in perfect harmony with the music, this scene marks the technical and visual highlight of the evening.
Unfortunately, the romantic aria “D’amour l’ardente flame” does not need these effects. Visually overloaded, the scene shows Marguerite (Susan Graham) superimposed with a huge interactive projection literally engulfing her in flames. Lepage would have done better to trust the singer and her beautiful, intense interpretation since the bold projection undermined the intimacy of the music.
Met Conductor James Levine elicits the French lightness, full of verve for the specialties of the score, and weaves a transparent backdrop for soloists which highlight the unadulterated human drama.
The singers’ lyric voices excel. Tenor Marcello Giordani plays a passionate Faust, and characterizes both the bitterness of the aged and the hot-headedness of youth. The dark and charismatic baritone John Relyea plays Méphistophélès, with an enormous physical presence in his red leather devil costume. Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, enchants with her warm-hearted and innocent Marguerite.
Equal in intensity and musicality to the soloists are the choir and ballet. The choir is excellent (thanks to choirmaster Donald Palumbo) and create appropriate moods, mastering the score’s many transmutations: loud and boisterous as a student choir; reverent and crystal clear in the sacred parts and heaven scene; seductive as the wooing sylphs.
The ballet highlight of the evening is the “Minuet of the Will o’ the Wisps.” Its choreography features dancers on the different floors of the set, Spider-man-like flying, and climbing acrobats.
After the infernal ride to hell, the final scene features a visual and musical contrast. The Met Choir and Children’s Choir appear in angelic white, accompanied by only winds, strings, and four solo violins. Here Marguerite ascends to heaven, curiously not levitating as the rest of production might have us predict, but climbing up a ladder, sure-footed and sincere.
The Met audience welcomed the new production with a hearty applause.
La Damnation de Faust
Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center
Tickets: www.metoperafamily.org
Running time: Approximately 2 Hours, 45 Minutes
Closes: Dec. 4
