Faust (Gounod)
Jul. 12th, 2018 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnSo 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 wereValentin 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.
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
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.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-15 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-15 03:32 am (UTC)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.)
no subject
Date: 2018-07-23 10:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-23 06:06 pm (UTC)