Berlioz’s ‘nightmare’ opera worked like a dream CBSO/Kazuki Yamada, Symphony Hall, Birmingham

The Damnation of Faust

★★★★★

Imagine a journey that takes in wild mountain gorges, a tavern full of roaring drunks, and armies drawn up for battle on the Hungarian plains. Roaming through all this is a dried-up scholar named Faust, now suddenly come to life and eagerly learning about excitement and love and lust under the guidance of his new friend, Méphistophélès. He has a few moments of delirious happiness with his lady love, Marguerite, but the Devil demands his due and he ends up in Hell.

The story is so vast in scope that composers have mostly steered clear of it. Berlioz, however, turned it into The Damnation of Faust, a sort of dream, or nightmare, for soloists, chorus and vast orchestra. Some have tried to realise Berlioz’s vision in the opera house, but I’ve never been convinced. There are too many gaps in the narrative, which flies from gorge to tavern to bedroom with no real explanation. A concert performance is the only thing that suits this “theatre of the mind”, but the set pieces really need to be surpassingly vivid.

At this riveting performance, the work’s difficulties seemed to melt away, not least because of the sublime playing of the orchestra, and the exuberant, tenderly expressive yet tautly disciplined conducting of Kazuki Yamada. The elfin Dance of the Spirits, when Faust dreams of Marguerite while Méphistophélès looks on ironically, had a delicacy that melted the heart. So many individual players distinguished themselves, above all Rachel Pankhurst, whose cor anglais plumbed the depths of Faust’s sorrow in the final part. Behind the orchestra was the CBSO Chorus, fortified by men from the Hallé Chorus, who threw themselves into their different roles like a truly operatic chorus.

Wonderful though they were, Berlioz’s eccentric, sublime vision would not have come to life had the soloists been weaker. Jonathan Lemalu as the innkeeper Brander had a voice that seemed marinated in centuries of drinking. Grace Durham was an affecting and dignified Marguerite, while Nahuel di Pierro clearly enjoyed himself as Méphistophélès.

But all were put in the shade by the Samoan tenor Pene Pati as the yearning, desperate Faust, producing a golden thread of sound that can swell without strain to magnificence. The agonising moment when he called out Marguerite’s name in despair simply wrung the heart.

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Heartbreaking: tenor Pene Pati with conductor Kazuki Yamada