Gounod : Faust
Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
While I always had high hopes of Jonas Kaufmann and René Pape in the principal roles of Gounod's "Faust", my main reason for taking tickets for an opera of which I'm not especially fond (rather than staying comfortably at home with my radio) resided in tonight's conductor. I became aware of Nézet-Séguin a couple of years ago, and have found since then that he provides consistently satisfactory listening experiences. I therefore trusted that he would transmit those qualities to "Faust", and lift it out of the routine into which it so easily falls.
The initial impression was somewhat mitigated. Leaving aside, for the moment, the production (of which more later), the very first thing that struck me was that Kaufmann's French (normally excellent) had deteriorated since I last heard it, and that his tone was oddly muffled, as if he had cotton wool stuffed in his cheeks. That, fortunately, turned out to be a not entirely successful, but understandable, attempt to portray the elderly Faust; the moment he shed that guise, his sound cleared and brightened, and the rest of the performance was pretty well exemplary, secure, ardent, dramatic and focused. The second thing that annoyed me was the chorus in the tavern scene which was, frankly, scrappy, and I was a bit shocked that the conductor let it pass. There too, it was a temporary problem; come the Kermesse, both chorus and orchestra truly sprang to life, and I had no further complaints on either ground.
The production by Des McAnuff sets "Faust" in 20th Century dress. That's not exactly a problem, in fact, I can hardly remember the last time I saw a production actually done in the "proper" period (i.e. 15th Century Germany). However, the basic premise struck me as rather faulty; Faust here is a nuclear physicist in the immediate aftermath of WWII, haunted by the spectre of the atom bomb. A moral dilemma, certainly, but completely irrelevant to "Faust", because the moral dilemma in "Faust" is not in the actual summoning of the devil, but in how Faust chooses to use his second life. Faust himself is a basically selfish character; he doesn't actually regret anything he has done, he merely regrets what he thinks is the time wasted achieving nothing he judges of significance. Fortunately for the performance, Kaufmann and Pape, well-educated Germans both, were clearly bringing their own cultural heritage into the performance with them, and therefore able to by-pass the limitations of the director's view.
The other thing I found actually slightly offensive, in this context, was that rather than rejuvenating Faust in his own time, in this production, Mephistopheles takes him back into his past youth. Therefore, the bulk of the action takes place during the First World War, and while the image of the soldiers returning more battered than heroic in Act IV has become more or less a cliché in its own right, the juxtaposition of the tavern full of soldiers about to leave for the front (it should be mostly students, who are not about to fight), and then the popular festivities of the Kermesse, seemed singularly callous. It's one thing to imagine it in medieval Germany, on a kind of 'local' level, it's quite another to imagine it in the context of the appalling carnage of WWI. Most of the rest of the setting, however, was not so troublesome, just occasionally a little ridiculous when the libretto clashed too much with the image.
The weakest link amongst the cast was certainly Marina Poplavskaya's Marguerite. The notes were all there, and the voice is attractive, but the interpretation felt like it was being phoned in. This was a performance of a performance, rather than a real attempt at portraying a character, and her chemistry with Kaufmann, who was doing his best to light the fire, was poor, both vocally and physically. Even in the final scene, when something finally struck sparks from her, she made the mistake of allowing "Anges purs..." to start in the breathy tone she had been using for the duet just preceding, to indicate Marguerite's shattered mental state. That last trio needs to start in a sudden blaze of confidence, as she finally rejects her earthly desires, and soar ever upwards from there.
Fortunately, the men more than made up for Poplavskaya's inadequacies. Kaufmann I have already mentioned. Pape is surely the leading proponent of Mephistopheles today. I saw a broadcast of him in the role in France a couple of years ago; his French has improved very noticeably, and he was much easier in the part now, fully invested, finding a nice balance between the comic and the sinister, gathering intensity as the evening went on. Russell Braun gave a characteristically excellent performance as Valentin, and with the full backing of the orchestra (by now almost incandescent, for the last third of the opera) absolutely sang the stuffing out of his death scene. With three outstanding male principals, and a splendidly engaged orchestra, it was easy enough to pardon a less than ideal Marguerite.
[Next event: 15th December]
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