Composer: Hector Berlioz, after Goethe's Faust. At: Lyric Opera of Chicago. Tickets: 312-332-2244;
www.lyricopera.org; $33-$207. Runs through: March 17 ( in repertory )
Hector Berlioz's exquisite music for The Damnation of Faust sports more string passages, delicate woodwinds and sublime choral episodes than braying brass and tympani. Except for the famous Rakoczy March and the scene of Faust's damnation, the score is surprisingly free of richly colored Berlioz bombast, yet under conductor Sir Andrew Davis it's full-blooded and nuanced. The quartet of singers ( unusually, all Americans ) project beautiful vocal lines, plangency ( what's French opera sans plangency? ) and act convincingly. Paul Groves ( Faust ) , John Relyea ( Mephistopheles ) , Christian Van Horn ( Brander ) and Susan Graham ( wow! Marguerite ) perform with brio.
This new production's musical values are not in question, yet one question always lingers over The Damnation of Faust: Is it an opera? Berlioz wrote it for concert presentation, with only four soloists plus chorus and orchestra. Decades after his death, it was adapted for opera-house presentation. I think it's neither opera nor oratorio, but a tone poem for orchestra and voices. It's a character study more than a work of dramatic action, lacking the arias and ensemble pieces that are hallmarks of 19th-century opera.
Eventually, The Damnation of Faust focuses on Faust's seduction of Marguerite, as do the other two chief operatic adaptations of Goethe's romantic-era opus magnus, thereby reducing Goethe's metaphysics to lust. Hey, if Faust really loved Marguerite, he'd take her to a priest first and to bed second. But it's damn difficult to turn metaphysics into good theater, perhaps because no author—not Goethe, Berlioz, Shakespeare, Mozart or even Tony Kushner—can provide satisfactory answers to the spiritual and philosophic dilemmas of Mankind.
This new production offers neutral, abstract modern design elements and an amusingly tawdry interpretation by director Stephen Langridge. Faust never is old; there are mice-with-whips dancers; Marguerite, her mother and the chorus are portrayed as 1980s Soviet-era Eastern European conformists. Choristers are in five groups, each group identically costumed and bewigged as plus-sized women, old men, soldiers, etc. The central abstract scenic design is a vast white shadow box allowing free use of colored light strips and John Boesche's projected textures. Stage elevators create smaller boxes for specific scenes ( such as Marguerite's apartment, the only realistic design ) . The 1980s-era costumes are intentionally dull, although placing tall Relyea in a purple tux makes Mephisto look like Lurch in lavender.
The disappointing choreography runs mostly to athletic staging with few formal dance elements. Are dance soloists needed to portray soldiers doing push-ups? This failure of imagination seems as much the fault of Langridge as of choreographer Phillipe Giraudeau. Landgridge's overstated anti-clericism and anti-militarism are as subtle as a hammer blow, making the entire Rakoczy March an old-hat anti-war dumbshow. The net effect is vigorous—this meta-theatrical production never bores—but less profound than the music alone.
