The day after

 

Mornings.  Gaaaaah.  Sunday mornings after an opera are always more than a little aggrieved, and I blew a few gaskets last night.*  GAAAAH.  

Nycteris

I'm not a traditionalist, and up in my wee brain is my own directorial take on Faust that takes place in a college town in the US during the Vietnam war that I will impose on some community center before I die. . . . 

IMO when a concept sucks is when it is unconcerned with telling the story or worse, it is trying to tell a different story than the one the music tells. 

I'm not a hand-on-heart card-carrying traditionalist;  if you promise you're telling the story**  I'll gladly come to your community centre.***   I've seen, for example, LA BOHEME in modern dress, and it works just fine.  Young impecunious artists still starve in garrets—and it's still perfectly possible to die because you can't afford medical treatment.†  But that's the thing:  you're not allowed to turn what something is into something it isn't.  I wouldn't automatically throw out Faust as Robert Oppenheimer†† . . . but you do have to tell Gounod's story if you're using his FAUST. 

Diane in MN

I like Faust a LOT, and despite people who get snarky about it because it has good tunes and big numbers, it can be very powerful in a good production.

It's a 19th century soap [opera].†††  A lot of the old war horses are—my favourite Verdis, for pity's sake, LA TRAV, AIDA, RIGOLETTO . . . OTELLO too, although that's much more of a well-made play underneath than most.  

The final trio raises the hair on the back of my neck every time. 

Ah.  Yes.  I burst into tears.  Every time. 

I thought the singing was terrific (although I have one quibble: Poplavskaya's voice sounds too mature to my ear for Marguerite, who is very young and very naive; it's hard to hear Poplavskaya as anything but a grown-up), 

I agree.  And while I like Poplavskaya's voice, I'm a little nonplussed that she is quite such the flavour of the month . . . and last month, and next month . . . at the Met.  Surely she isn't the only . . . um, well, I'd call her a lyric soprano, but I'm probably wrong.  Someone who has the proper range and warmth for roles like Marguerite.  But she does sound too old for Marguerite—one of the reasons you-the-listener shouldn't just write Marguerite off as a stupid little misery is because she is that young and naïve—and she is also all alone.  Everyone but her brother is dead, and he's off fighting . . . somebody or other.   But this is perhaps the one advantage that someone who saw it has over someone who only heard it—I'm not sure Poplavskaya puts over innocence, but she sure puts over tragedy.  The scene with her utter turd of a brother‡, after Faust (with Mephistopheles' help) puts a sword through him, and he's dying and blaming her at the top of his lungs, she's kneeling beside him, holding out the medallion she'd given him when he went off to battle and that he'd yanked off in a fury when he found out she was dishonoured, oh my, she does that well.  And despite her being too old and having too much self-possession, I could suspend my disbelief for that third-act seduction.  Faust's role is pretty straightforward—he wants to get laid, and he wants it now.  I'm not faulting Kaufmann in the least—he does it up prime.  But Marguerite has a much harder task:  she has to both want and not-want, and do it without just looking like a drippy virgin or a cock-tease.  I think Poplavskaya succeeds. 

but the introduction of the crying/silent baby didn't go over well with me. 

That may be the low point of the entire opera for me—even worse than Faust's suicide—perhaps because the infanticide is crucial to the plot and Faust's suicide is just another of this idiot director's high concepts.  But the way the baby dies is so repellent.  Marguerite has been besieged by devils at the church, poor wretch, and runs off.  Some of the chorus clusters round her for two or three seconds, blocking her from view, and then they move away and she looks exactly the same as she did two or three seconds ago except that her front is now flat, and she's holding a distractingly bad doll approximation of a baby.  She kisses it absent-mindedly and then rushes over to the sink . . . ah yes, the sink.  It is a Symbolic Sink.  Faust drinks from it in the first scene, and Siebel—Michele Losier, another excellent singer‡‡—derives her holy water from it to rejuvenate her withered flowers.  SPARE ME THE HIGH CONCEPTS.  It also sits in the middle of the stage . . . being a sink.  ARRRRRRRGH.  Anyway.  Marguerite rushes over and thrusts the baby into it.   I think she's supposed to make a mad grimace at this point, but if so, her nerve failed her, because what it looked like to me was—oh gods, get this bit over with fast.  

And the ending, as described by Margaret Juntwait this afternoon and you tonight, can only be called bogus. 

Yep.  Highly bogus.   Lowly bogus.  And in-betweenly bogus.

AnguaLupin

I think this is the first time my views on a Live in HD production didn't match up with yours. I (mostly) liked this Faust. Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that I actually don't normally like Gounod's Faust, so almost anything they do to it is an improvement. It's so damn Victorian. "Oh, look, our favorite morality tale ever, do hold still while we hit you over the head with the morality bat. And while we're at it, the religion bat, too. Wait, wait, you're running away! Come back! We finish the opera with a paean to Jesus!" Gah. 

Yes but . . . you don't like the opera.  I entirely agree that it's a fairly sick-making morality play.‡‡‡  If you can't suspend your disbelief that far—and no blame if you can't—then this opera isn't for you.  I don't like Shakespeare, but I'm not going to praise a production of one of his plays for making it not Shakespeare.  Well, okay—I might—but only tongue in cheek.  No, really . . .  

* * *

* We had exactly eight ringers, one of them Monty, and so Niall, thank the gods, took the conservative course and we only rang call changes.  I am therefore still alive to tell the tale. 

** And you have the singers.  Ahem. 

*** I will bring several of my own cushions.  Community centre seats . . . 

† Although it's harder in France than some places.  I believe their national health care is one of the better systems. 

†† And the fact that it's been done isn't necessarily damning either:  how many times has Beauty and the Beast been retold?  I'm not a John Adams fan, and one production of NIXON IN CHINA has been enough for me;  I heard highlights from DR ATOMIC and thought, right, that'll do.  In theory backdating Oppenheimer to the most famous operatic FAUST sounds kind of interesting, and when someone sent me the link to the NYTimes review  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/arts/music/a-review-of-the-metropolitan-operas-faust.html?_r=1&ref=metropolitanopera I read it and thought oh, well, it's a critic being a critic^ and tried to hope for the best.  I now think he was being kind and restrained. 

^ Which is perhaps a rant for another day 

††† http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=soapopera seems to think opera is an ironic choice, but I'm not so sure.  The reason I can't watch soaps^ is because nobody does anything except have sex and nervous breakdowns.  When does anyone earn a living or do the housework?  But you need some kind of plot, probably implausible, to hang the sex and nervous breakdowns on, and opera is pretty much the same thing only with tunes, and it's also over in a few hours. 

^ Barring a flirtation with DARK SHADOWS in my youth but I couldn't actually, ahem, stick it for long either 

‡ Admirably played and sung by Russell Braun.  That's a hell of a cast to keep up with, especially when you're playing the scum from the bottom of the black lagoon, and he did it really well.  

‡‡ One of my minor pleasures is a really good cross-dressing girl.  You know the theatrical swagger that a good female actor playing a man puts on?  I love this when it's done well.  Losier did it well. 

‡‡‡ And when the CHRIST IS RISEN comes up in the subtitles I'm sitting there thinking . . . um . . . sometimes I'd rather not be reminded what they're saying.  I'm not a Christian, so that is my bias, but it also does seem to me a trifle inappropriate here.