Faust (Gounod)

[cahn]

So after I watched Poplavskaya and Keenlyside in Don Carlo, I asked for the DVD for my birthday (watch this space, because of COURSE I have Opinions) and then I went to Met on Demand and to my RL opera friend and asked both of them for everything they had with either of these guys. (...google tells me that Poplavskaya is a NY realtor now?? okay, if it makes her happy, but man, she was good)

As a result, I've now watched two back-to-back Gounod Fausts. The first was on Met Player, with Jonas Kaufmann as Faust, René Pape as Méphistophélès, and Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite, and transposes Faust to a shiny 20th-C laboratory where he is a scientist. The second was a borrowed DVD of a ROH production with Roberto Alagna as Faust, Angela Gheorghiu as Marguerite, and Bryn Terfel as Méphistophélès (which it turns out I have actually watched before from Netflix, back when I had Netflix) and transposes Faust to 1870's Paris.

This opera is hard for me to watch, knowing what is going to happen to Marguerite by the time Act V comes around. Marguerite becomes pregnant by Faust, is abandoned by him and by everyone else -- except Siebel, maybe? Her brother Valentin challenges Faust to a duel and is killed, cursing Marguerite and blaming her for his death. As a result she goes insane and kills her baby, and then is condemned to death. (She attains salvation at the end, I guess, but that's a pitiful consolation given that if Faust hadn't seduced her she would presumably have been saved without having to go through all of that terribleness first.)

The opera seems almost to me to be about the limitations of divine power... everyone's always asking God to save him or her, and He doesn't. (To emphasize this, in the ROH production, the soldiers come back from war in their big Soldier's Chorus limping and bandaged.) He doesn't save Marguerite from Mephistopheles' second-hand seduction via Faust, or Valentin being awful to her, or going insane, or being condemned to death, or even Mephistopheles scaring her, despite her praying a lot. (I suppose -- if you were Valentin being awful -- you could make a case that when she gives in to Faust that she invites these consequences, but the opera makes it very clear that it doesn't subscribe to that interpretation, and that Marguerite is just about blameless in the whole thing.) Interestingly, there is an intimation that Marguerite's love in the medallion she gives Valentin saves him from harm, and when he throws it away it allows Mephistopheles to kill him.

Why does Valentin get to make that choice as to whether he wants to be protected, and Marguerite doesn't? I think there's a thread here of "[She] saved others; [herself she] could not save" -- a human being can make the choice to help or hurt another, but Gounod/Barbier/Carre's God (Goethe's God? Have only skimmed vaguely through Goethe -- I don't think the medallion thing is in there, though) isn't going to interfere with what humans (or even devils) choose. If Faust had chosen not to seduce Marguerite, or to stay with her (or even not to have summoned the devil at all), or if Valentin had chosen to be kind to her rather than awful: then Marguerite would have been able to make a choice as to whether to accept it. But God won't force any of them to make the right choice, even when it means taking away someone else's agency.

In principle I very much agree with this, and it is in keeping with the fundamental principles of LDS theology (my theological feelings and LDS theology are not necessarily always in harmony, but they are here), but in practice I'm totally appalled and feel that God should definitely step in here. Which is honestly pretty close to how I feel about real life.

Various other random thoughts:

-I should probably not have watched Kaufmann first, because his voice has such a lovely baritonal quality that it was jarring to hear an actual tenor voice sing the part!

-After overdosing on Verdi, I'm all, why are there soooo many non-plot-relevant solo arias and not more trios and quartets?? Although I did like the trios and quartets that were there; they were a lot of fun.

-Pape and Terfel were so different as Méphistophélès and it was rather fascinating. Pape's Méphistophélès was suave and urbane and definitely had a sardonic sense of humor about almost everything. Terfel played Méphistophélès as much more serious and grim, much more Satanic in the usual sense. I thought Pape's version worked rather better in some parts, like the Méphistophélès-Marthe-Faust-Marguerite quartet, but Terfel never let you forget that this is a diabolic tragedy, and there's something to that.

-Kaufmann. WHOA. If Kaufmann sang to me like he was singing to Poplavskaya, well, I'm just saying that I totally do not blame Marguerite one little bit for falling for him.

-Alagna, on the other hand, is so cute! He made a surprisingly convincing old man, and then when he came back as young!Faust he did an exuberant cartwheel across the stage, which was adorable. And then -- I think I totally missed this the first time I saw it -- in Act IV he's shown as a drug addict, who is high when he kills Valentin. Really great acting -- the first time I saw it I was not impressed by his Nice Guy persona in Act III when he seduces Marguerite (I kept thinking, why would she even go with him?), but this time I realized he really is playing the Nice Guy who won't give up and keeps whining that the girl is being meeeean when she won't have sex with him. It's actually very well done.

-But, man, I was watching this intercut with Don Giovanni (also from my RL opera friend, of this DG more later) and I suspect that while I was quite impressed with his acting and French singing, Alagna doesn't have the musical prereqs to do Mozart, where it's much more important to be totally and deeply feeling the orchestra and the other singers or else it's really, really noticeable. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong about this.

-Interestingly, I found Gheorghiu more interesting to watch but I thought Poplavskaya was the better visceral actor -- but as a result I found the Met version more painful to watch (because I felt so deeply for her Marguerite that it was awful thinking of what was coming) and the ROH more entertaining and more interesting to watch. But I also thought the Met version was better. I don't even know.

-Valentin: is just awful. AWFUL. And he doesn't much seem to have a personality besides being awful. I watched two Valentins, one of them my idol Simon Keenlyside, and neither of them made much of an impression on me besides being awful to Marguerite. And if Keenlyside is boring me, I am going to say something is wrong with the character. Except that wow, the Keenlyside/Alagna swordfight was brilliant on both sides -- Alagna's Faust staggering around in the grip of a morphine high with perfect choreography timing, and Keenlyside very snappily fencing. (Is there anything he can't do?)

-Though interestingly, in the ROH production zombie!Keenlyside came back out during the Walpurgis Night ballet and was slapped around by the ballerinas, I guess showing that he was damned for being awful? I personally really really wanted a redemption narrative here where the Marguerite!ballerina saved him, but I didn't get one.

-D, who ALWAYS has the WORST timing when he comes to see what I'm watching in opera (as a result, he now believes that Eugene Onegin is all about cosmonauts because of an unfortunate dance scene in a regie version I was watching), came in right when I was watching the Walpurgis Night scene and Bryn Terfel came out in drag. I ask you. The entire opera to choose from, and D had to come in right there?? But yeah. Bryn Terfel. In a black sparkly strappy evening dress. Is a thing. I totally wonder what the singers think of this kind of thing, whether Terfel thought this was amusing or obnoxious. (He looked amused, but he's a good enough actor that he would look amused no matter what he actually thought.)

-My opinion on the endings varied wildly. In the Met version, Poplavskaya climbs a bunch of stairs while scientists in lab coats sing her to her eternal rest, and it's kind of cool but also weird, I'm not sure it totally worked for me. Then Kaufmann shows up again, as an old guy, and re-drinks his poison, and that's an interesting ending. In the ROH version, the organist, I think, turns out to be God or an angel, and he and Mephistopheles tip their hats at each other, which is really interesting. Alagna goes back to being an old man, but it wasn't clear what happened to him after that.

Comments

[selenak]

Trivia alert: Gounoud's Faust wasn't staged under the title Faust in Germany until rather recently (the last twenty years or thereabouts), but called Marguerite. Partly because of the change in emphasis, but mainly because when it was composed, it fell smack into the fervent climate of late 19th century nationalism, and what with Faust being THE German drama, it was seen as French trivialisation and what not, unworthy of the title. Incidentally, Goethe, child of the 18th century enlightenment, would have been somewhere between appalled and amused about this. Not really surprised. When he was one of the few German writers not anti-Napoleon and even continued to speak well of the guy after Waterloo, attacks ran wild. (Of course, between being a literary institution at that point and also a financially secure official in Weimar, he had the luxury of not caring.)

Anyway, the first time I heard Gounoud's opera in excerpts was in a film version of Phantom of the Opera, of all things, and then later I saw it staged in Augsburg. It has some gorgeous music, but yes, definitely a different animal, and more so than Don Carlos vs Don Carlo. All the satire is gone - Faust has some of the wittiest passages around in between all the tragedy -, most of the frustrations about understanding the world, and there's a whole more military (Valentin in the play has just one scene. There is no Siebold), and the take on religion is different like whoa.

The opera seems almost to me to be about the limitations of divine power... everyone's always asking God to save him or her, and He doesn't.

That, right there. For all that the play begins with a bet between God and the devil, and Gretchen is sincerely, deeply religious, it's noticable the product of an agnostic who was a pantheist at best, really not fond of organized religion in any form, and mostly believing in the divinity of nature and evolution. Faust has two prologues, one a dispute between a poet, a director and a clown (still funny and still to the point; the poet is Goethe making fun of not just some colleagues but also his younger self, the director/producer makes every point ever about never mind philosophy, spectacle and action is what gets us crowds, etc.), next the bet in heaven, and usually the actor who plays the director then becomes God, while the clown becomes Mephistopheles and the poet later appears again as Faust. My point is that God = a slightly over his head director trying to get the show going. Not exactly what Gounoud was aiming at.

Gretchen came into being because young Goethe, still pressured by his dad to become a lawyer, as a student attended the trial of one Susanna Brand who was condemned of having killed her baby, and this stuck with him. She's also in some ways the echo of young G. being a Shakespeare fan like most young German writers who turned from French to English literature in the late 18th century, and falling for Hamlet in particular, i.e. Ophelia. The song Mephisto sings just before the duel is Ophelia's song in German, slightly paraphrased, acknowledging the debt. But as opposed to Laertes, who does have his good points, Valentin is vile (and mercifully limited to that one scene where he's the worst and promptly dies, but not before shaming his sister in front of everyone). He's part of the society that destroys Gretchen. Who, however, in her madness at the end sees Faust clearly, the way she didn't before, which is why she rejects his rescue attempt. "Mir graut vor dir" - "you horrify me" can't be put stronger when it comes to rejection.

Just before the final scene in prison, there's a scene between Faust and Mephisto, when Faust has found out what happened to Gretchen, which is famously the only one to survive in prose from Goethe's first draft to the finalized version decades later. Everything else is in verse, but that scene in its rawness is so powerful that I can understand why he decided to keep it this way. It's very much a young writer still fueled with what he felt when watching that trial. It's also one of those scenes that point out the pettiness of evil; this drama's Mephistopheles is a fantastic character, arguably wittier and more profound than any other stage devil, and so it's easy to like him best. But in this scene, his summary of the Gretchen situation - that she's in prison, dead child, ruined life, about to be executed - is "well, she's not the first". Shrug. And there you have it.

Speaking of Goethe's Mephisto, here's an English subtitled excerpt of one of the most famous productions of the play, featuring one of the most famous actors to play the role. It's the second prologue "- Prologue in Heaven" -, the one directly after the theatre prologue, with Gustaf Gründgens as Mephistopheles. The filmed version is from the late 1950s. Gründgens played Mephisto for the first time in 1932, one year before Hitler, and it was immediately hailed as a classic. However, the other reason why this particular actor/role combination became famous was that when the Nazis did get to power, Gründgens - who'd had a left wing reputation and was gay, thus was seen as a very Weimar Republic type of actor - essentially made a deal with Göring who'd taken a fancy to him, which was regarded by his former brother-in-law, Klaus Mann, as the ultimate sell out, which is why Gustaf Gründgens is the model for Hendrik Höfgen in Klaus Mann's novel Mephisto about an actor selling his soul to the metaphorical Third Reich devil. Anyway, here is the prologue in heaven scene with the bet, and I hope the English subtitles render the difference between the angels speaking highly formal, while Mephisto speaks German slang (of Goethe's day). It will, at any rate, definitely demonstrate the difference re: play vs opera's attitude towards God.

Jonas Kaufmann is fantastic. I've seen him all those years ago when he started out in Munich at the opera there. Also in later productions, but it's a special glow when you manage to catch a singer just on the brink of making it.

[cahn]

:D I hoped you would weigh in, because I knew you would know all about Goethe :)

it's noticable the product of an agnostic who was a pantheist at best, really not fond of organized religion in any form, and mostly believing in the divinity of nature and evolution.

AH! This makes a lot of sense. There's the shadow of this in the opera, but every time it feels like it's time to engage some of those ideas, the opera pulls back and has a nice musical set-piece instead. They are very lovely pieces, but it felt like I was only getting half the story somehow. And whoa, I did not get satire from the opera at all. It's a humorous opera, but it's got a very different feel to it than the Goethe excerpt you linked.

Gretchen came into being because young Goethe, still pressured by his dad to become a lawyer, as a student attended the trial of one Susanna Brand who was condemned of having killed her baby, and this stuck with him.

Wow. Having lived in a post-Goethe world (although I was vaguely aware Gretchen doesn't appear in, say, Marlowe), it never occurred to me to ask how Gretchen came to be. This is amazing. (I mean, not really amazing in a good way, but still.)

But in this scene, his summary of the Gretchen situation - that she's in prison, dead child, ruined life, about to be executed - is "well, she's not the first".

GAH. (I don't really have anything else to say about it but that.)

Anyway, here is the prologue in heaven scene with the bet, and I hope the English subtitles render the difference between the angels speaking highly formal, while Mephisto speaks German slang (of Goethe's day). It will, at any rate, definitely demonstrate the difference re: play vs opera's attitude towards God.

This is wonderful. And Mephisto is wonderful (as you say, it is very easy for me to like him best). But yes, this has a lot more to say about God (and the devil). Maybe I should just get a DVD player that can play European DVDs, sigh.

Kaufmann really is fantastic — that's so cool that you saw him before he was big :)

[selenak]

He's also incredibly patient, or was a few years back. I was at a matinee in Salzburg where he sang songs from Benjamin Britten, and despite the audience at the beginning having been reminded to switch off their phones, these rang an irritating FIVE TIMES before Jonas Kaufmann at last said something along the lines of "one more time, and I'm stopping the show".

British playwright Howard Brenton did a great English version of Goethe's Faust (both parts) for the RSC in the mid 90s. I saw it staged at Stratford, and because Brenton is an excellent playwright in his own right, it's not only very stage friendly but captures the wit abd satire really well, which is a bit lost, in say, the 19th century translation by George Eliot's life partner. I'll post you an excerpt separately to illustrate. It's available on Amazon Kindle for 14 something Euro, if you're interested. Bear in mind, though, that since it was made explicitly for the stage it contains some cuts (like, for example, the scene where Mephisto plays Faust for an increasingly bewildered student who wants to ask the professor which subjects he should choose at the university; it's a very funny scene, but not essential for the plot).

Meanwhile, have some fun (I hope) with this old post of mine about Goethe and Schiller, and why they'd be slashed day in and day out if they'd been English-writing poets and a silly follow up here.

[cahn]

That's a really cool story about Kaufmann, and I would love to hear him sing Britten!

[selenak]

From the "Prologue in the Theatre":

Director:
You two, we've stuck together in the theatre, despite the stress
of life in our profession:
the disastrous openings, the criticial pannings and the odd success;
but I've a confession.
This time around,
I just don't know,
I feel that we're on dodgy ground.
How do we make this show
About life and death
Funny and philosophical
in the same breath?
How do we make
Redemption entertaining?
I love to see an audience
pour in the theatre,
a river, flood water
in a whirlpool in the foyer,
fighting for a ticket and a drink,
a wave that rises then falls:
what will they all think?
Only you, the poet can unite
so many different thoughts,
feelings, dreams.
My friend,
we need a big one tonight.

Poet: Don't talk to me of theatre-goers,
that socially inadequate herd:
the pretentious nerd
in the gallery,
the glamarous nonety
in the stalls.
Poetic inspiration panics,
At the stink of gin and tonics,
The moment's fashion
glitters, then fades away,
True poetry, true passion
must wait to have its day.

Actor: Ah, writing for posterity!
I say:
Just knock out the play
in the here and now;
don't worry if you're a poet or a hack,
The bigger the audience,
the bigger the come-back.
O.k., let's have reason, common sense,
the beautiful and true,
but with a bit of a gag,
and a giggle, too.

(....)
Director: Right. Stop navel-gazing,
Time to try something
amazing.
With all the theatre's tricks.
The whole mix:
The serious and the daft,
The sun, the moon, the stars,
Animals, rocks, and plants,
For it is our ambition
to use our craft
to pace out the circle of creation:
We have a story to tell:
A little stroll
from heaven
through the world
and all the way
down to hell!

Which is, of course, a self description of what Goethe was going for with Faust. Incidentally, re: Brenton's anachronisms (like "foyer" or "gin and tonic"), those are fine with me, among other things because Goethe didn't try to write medieval German, either. Faust and Gretchen talk late 18th century (i.e. contemporary to Goethe) German to each other. And it is a conscious choice on Goethe's part; in Part II, when Faust talks to Helen (of Troy), he adopts her hexameters, for example. And the discussion about the theatre is meant to be current day as originally written, too. When this version was performed in Stratford, the three actors were wearing present day clothing and got on stage from the audience, so it took some people a while to realize the play had already started. Then, as mentioned, it gets into the "prologue in heaven". Which you've already seen; here's Brenton's take on Mephisto's last line:
Yes, now and then I look the old boy up,
to keep relations on a civil level;
and it is very courteous of God,
to sup with me at all; I mean, I am the devil.

[cahn]

Oh wow.

I feel that we're on dodgy ground.
How do we make this show
About life and death
Funny and philosophical
in the same breath?
How do we make
Redemption entertaining?

And this is the actor who plays God! And I see what you mean about the poet making fun of Goethe... SOLD.

(Also feel free to tell me anything else that would enhance me reading this, like, I would not have known about that Director-Poet-Actor correspondence... :) )

[alcanis_ivennil]

That ROH Faust is very nice! I have it with a different cast (Grigolo, Gheoghiu, Pape and Hvorostovsky) and damn, Pape looked GREAT in that sparkly dress :D Kind of like if Sarastro stole the Queen of Night's dress. Also, poor ghostly Valentin! I felt bad for him, but then again, it was Dima and watching him in that scene just twisted the knife.

[cahn]

HA, because I cannot deny that I was thinking that if I had to pick one bass to put in a sparkly dress, it would, uh, not be Terfel. But it might very well be Pape!

Oh, gosh, it would be really interesting to see Dima in that role. I felt bad for ghostly!Keenlyside too, even though Valentin is terrible, and I kept wishing he got a ballet redemption arc. (I am a sucker for redemption arcs, though.)

[iberiandoctor]

heh, I am totally here for basses in sparkly dresses! And I imagine Hvorostovsky was amazing <3

[alcanis_ivennil]

He was! Damn, I miss him :(

[iberiandoctor]

I only know Faust from The Age of Innocence, but it's an opera which has always held resonance for me because of its connection in my brain to that most gorgeous of restrained, we-can-never-be-together, doomed love stories. I suspect I would totally be there for Kaufmann's conflicted Faust, and Keenlyside's fencing (although it's too bad Valentin is such a snooze in general), and I adore Bryn Terfel and the thought of him in a sparkly evening dress amuses me more than it ought to! Please tell me he was really into it ;)

[cahn]

Ah, I have always meant to and never have read The Age of Innocence! I think I should give it another try. Kaufmann totally sold me, I'd totally fall for him :D Terfel definitely looked like he was enjoying it! :)