The story of Faust is centuries old, yet the New York Metropolitan’s staging of Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust managed to create quite a buzz of anticipation and curiosity. With shiny new technology, director Robert Lepage brings something to the Met that has been missing for over 100 years: an attempt to stage a work that is neither strictly opera nor symphonic tone poem, but rather a fantastic dream blurring the boundaries between earth, heaven and hell.
Hector Berlioz's Damnation of Faust: The Retelling of a Dramatic Legend
Based on the German poet Goethe’s version of a medieval legend, Berlioz’s symphonic piece is a retelling of a retelling of a story. Faust’s tale first began as an Elizabethan play moralizing on good and evil, but in Goethe’s hands, Faust turns into a Romantic hero who cheats the devil and ends up in heaven after all.
Berlioz blends the two versions: for him, Faust is a genius who deals with the devil Mephistopheles out of loneliness and desperation. Later, Faust’s pact becomes a sacrificial exchange: his soul for Marguerite’s. Though first damned by Faust’s passion, his beloved is ultimately saved from hellfire through his love.
To stage such a metaphysical tale is no easy task. Berlioz himself had to create an entirely new genre just to get his fantastic ideas embodied in music. His string of scenes does not work well as an opera, because too much of the action happens offstage or in Faust’s head. The bits of Hungarian marches, fugues and hymns interlacing the music serve more as musical paintings of society rather than as direction to dramatic action.
Another difficultly is that the action happens quickly and demands fast scene changes: Faust on a whirlwind ride to the abyss is suddenly swallowed up by hell. Moments later, Marguerite ascends into heaven.
Robert Lepage's Technology at the New York Metropolitan Opera
Yet the Metropolitan’s staging of this “dramatic legend” worked extremely well. The stage consisted of four levels of panels that resembled a series of shadow boxes, a tableau of color and costume which did not require action, merely repetitive motion. The stylized yellows, blues and reds of the lighting matched the colorful orchestrations of Berlioz’s own musical language.
Technology also enabled the materialization of fantastical creatures such as the will o’ the wisps. Since legends of these ghosts who lured travelers to a marshy grave might very well have been inspired by methane gas exploding over peaty bogs, thermal and motion sensitive cameras projected pulsating blue/green/yellow silhouettes of actors on a computerized watery screen.
For the whirlwind ride to the abyss, Lepage fell back on early cinemascope and shadow puppets, achieving a jerky, frenetic motion. To keep pace with the quick jump from Faust in hell to Marguerite in heaven, stage lighting flashed from red to blue just as quickly as men’s chorus and brass were replaced by women’s chorus and harps.
Technology Vs. Singers John Relyea, Marcello Giordani and Susan Graham
Against the almost overwhelming technology, the singers managed to hold their own. John Relyea portrayed a clever, urbane Mephistopheles and Marcello Giordani created a dissolute, somewhat pathetic Faust. Susan Graham’s mezzo soprano was as ideally beautiful as her character Marguerite’s place in the tableau.
Yet technology snagged the starring role in this performance, and the appearance of the Windows logo on the blank screen during intermission might have been the computer’s attempt at a curtain call. Certainly the audience noticed and loved the effects.
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