Prior to Friday night I had never seen a staged production of Hector Berlioz’s 1846 légende dramatique, La damnation de Faust. I was familiar with the music, of course. Much of it is sacred music and it includes some of the loveliest work for brass in the repertory. However, on Friday night my wife and I went to Lyric’s brand new production of The Damnation of Faust and now I think I know I have some idea of the reasons that it was rejected by Paris audiences 150 years ago, closing after just two performances.
The work is, essentially, a series of tableaux vivants. It is less a work of scenes than of images. Faust meets Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles shows Faust earthly pleasures. Faust seduces Marguerite. Hell. Heaven. Despite the gloriousness of the music there is very little of real plot, action, or even emotion in the work. Had I considered it more closely I might have concluded that it was impossible to stage Damnation well.
I would have been wrong. Lyric’s new modern dress production, created by the young English director Stephen Langridge, is fantastically creative and transforms what would otherwise have been a rather static staged oratorio into a phantasmagoria. The pictures on Lyric’s web site simply don’t do it justice. It is a surreal production that I can only compare to a kaleidoscope, everyday images transformed into riots of color and motion with figures multiplied, warped, transformed, and moving in dizzying patterns. It’s a production I urge you to see.
The standout among the small principle cast was Mephistopheles, John Relyea. I think it might be hard for it to be otherwise. The balance among principles, chorus, and orchestra was praiseworthy.
I strongly recommend seeing this production if you have the chance.
Handicapping the season so far: Faust, Tosca, Elixir of Love, Hernani, Merry Widow.
The Critics
John Von Rhein liked it, too:
As if to answer those critics who have been lamenting the dearth of daring at Lyric Opera of Chicago in recent seasons, the company is flaunting its regained theatrical mojo with a terrific new production of Hector Berlioz’s “The Damnation of Faust.”
Lyric’s first staging of any Berlioz work, which opened to a jubilant reception Saturday at the Civic Opera House, hits you squarely in the face with its edginess, wit and unabashed theatricality — so much so that it is easy to overlook how strong the performance is musically, from the first-rate cast to the idiomatic conducting of Andrew Davis to the amazing work of the chorus and orchestra.
The devil really is in the details here, and the details add up to one hell of a good show.
As did Andrew Patner:
Rather than being set up in the conventional two or three acts, action is spread out over 19 discrete scenes that follow no clear pattern and range in time and space from Hungarian battlefields to a German student pub to a night flight through the sky to hell and heaven themselves. Why not, in a cinematic, even post-cinematic age, take the composer’s fluidity on its own terms and let the work’s monologues, arias, ballads, serenades, hymns and choruses be acted out and made visual?
That’s certainly Stephen Langridge’s view. In his North American debut, the rising British director and his design team — Greek George Souglides on sets and costumes, German Wolfgang Goebell on lights — for a set of tableaux that animate and extend Faust’s experiences as he moves from solitary scholar to would-be wooer to a maker of the ultimate existential choice of life or death. (The soul-selling comes quite late in Berlioz’s telling.)
As Mr. Patner suggests in his review, one of the remarkable things about this production is its extraordinary use of ordinariness. Ordinary people are made extraordinary by duplicating them. The chorus is divided into archetypes: the young man, the young woman, the older man, the older woman. Each archetype is costumed identically and groups of the four are carefully positioned and blocked on the stage. It’s really a fascinating effect. Kaleidoscopic, as I noted above.
As did Newcity Stage:
Yes, you could argue that sometimes this often busy production steps on the music’s toes in that some of the work’s most compelling music is lost in the shuffle, but the action is remarkably faithful to Berlioz’ libretto, albeit with a modern twist. Using the “Hungarian March†as a music video for soldier inductions works especially well, but the idea of dressing the Lyric Opera Chorus up as town busybodies gives the work a “Blue Velvet†feel.
Particularly inspired is having Marguerite’s disabled mother watching television in her room while her daughter is having her diabolical affair with Faust. In Berlioz’ telling, Marguerite accidentally kills her mother by overdosing her on sleeping medication so that she will not interfere with the affair, and the idea of having Méphistophélès watch television with her so comfortably is in itself a wry commentary on the medium.
But of course, none of this would mean much without Berlioz’ amazing music, which is well-served on all fronts. You would expect mezzo-soprano Susan Graham to be glorious in one of her signature roles as Marguerite, and despite being virtually unrecognizable in costume, she does not disappoint. Tenor Paul Groves makes an admirable Faust, even if his top notes in the Act II duet were thin on opening night and bass-baritone John Relyea makes a memorable Lyric debut as Méphistophélès.
This production also gives us some of the finest orchestral playing ever heard by the Lyric Opera Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis, who clearly came to know this complex score inside and out. Kudos, too, to Donald Nally’s Lyric Opera Chorus, who not only get to sing more in this one work than they would during an entire season, but have to serve as actors intimately involved with the fabric of the action as well; bravo. (Kudos, as well, to the large corps of solo dancers under choreographer Philippe Giraudeau who move gracefully throughout but are rarely perceived to be dancing in the traditional sense.)
It’s a hit!
