Fine, if flawed, take on a devilishly difficult piece
La Damnation de Faust
Glyndebourne Festival
Bizarrely original, weirdly disjointed, and threaded through a sequence of episodes devoid of much coherent narrative, Berlioz’s La
Damnation de Faust never sits altogether comfortably in either opera house or concert hall. Drawing his inspiration from Goethe’s poetic drama, the composer hedged his bets at its premiere in 1846 by calling it a “légende”; had he lived in the 20th century, he might have shaped it more smoothly for radio or cinema.
Directors with a taste for fantasy
have long been attracted to a panoramic scenario spanning earth, heaven and hell that offers licence to run wild: at the Met, Robert Lepage used CGI to present it as a giant picture-book; at ENO, Terry Gilliam transformed it into a satire of Nazi Germany; while in Paris, Alvis Hermanis presented Faust as Stephen Hawking on a mission to Mars.
For this new production at Glyndebourne, Richard Jones has been more restrained. He merely proposes that Mephistopheles is in charge throughout, presenting him as a professor of evil lecturing us on fallible, corruptible human nature, as a chorus of his diabolic pupils observe the action from above, seated like the audience in a bullring. Jones also furnishes him with additional passages of spoken address derived from Goethe, giving him the first and last word – a cynical move that Berlioz the arch-romantic would not have endorsed.
In an ingenious set by the young designer Hyemi Shin, this dubious concept is staged with Jones’s usual theatrical flair: scenes in Brander’s tavern, a military school and a brothel are etched with sharp imaginative wit. But a certain cartoon quality flattens the element of sublimity that glows in the music’s last half-hour – the spectacle of a few Christmas trees, for example, short-changes Faust’s ecstatic eulogy of the glories of nature, while Mephistopheles’s sneery conducting of the final chorus of seraphic redemption surely betrays the composer’s message and sensibility.
Even more perverse is Jones’s decision to follow this apotheosis with a banal Satanic ballet, transposed from an earlier part of the score and bringing the performance to an anticlimactic close. This is a miscalculation, neither subtle nor effective.
But the production is in all other respects excellent. In the title role, Allan Clayton copes splendidly with Berlioz’s cruelly challenging vocal writing and presents a sympathetic portrayal of a nice chap at the mercy of the devil – here in the charismatic shape of Christopher Purves, who surmounted an embarrassing fluff in his opening peroration to ooze Mephistophelian slime and venom to the manner born. There was also a lovely performance by mezzo-soprano Julie Boulianne, who transcended the note of caricature elsewhere to show Marguerite as an abused serving wench in Brander’s tavern: she sang D’amour l’ardente flamme with passionate conviction. The large chorus, including two youth choirs, sounded magnificent
Robin Ticciati conducts them all with affectionate sensitivity and an avoidance of the bombastic, even if I yearned for richer string sound than the London Philharmonic Orchestra provides. And a final shout, please, for the resourceful troupe of dancers and mimes who animate the spectacle with such energy and precision.