Preface: When I was emerging from my priggish adolescent cocoon of not listening to any music between Bach and Bartok (in time, not in the alphabet!) except for violin concerti, the first Romantic era piece to pique my interest was a recording of Hector Berlioz's Requiem Mass, with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy. It is very dramatic, very "operatic" (like Verdi's Requiem), though at the time I was also averse to opera.

Berlioz's "La Damnation de Faust," written between 1829 and 1846(!) is also very dramatic, very operatic. It is not an opera primarily because of the difficulties the innovative composer had with the Parisian opera tyrants. Officially a "Dramatic Legend in Four Parts," it has been staged on occasion, but I think that staging would be cheesy, and that the music is so vivid and multihued that any staging would seem cheesy. (I have seen my other favorite Faust opera, Boito's "Mefistofele" flamboyantly staged, but think that the music stimulates my imagination quite enough.)

I have two DVD recordings of "Damnation" and had an LP recording of one (conducted by Colin Davis) before that. I have heard at least the latter half of the piece in excess of a hundred times without paying much (any?) attention to the words. I couldn't understand what those dwelling in hell sing when the devil (Mephistopheles) "comes home," but I often don't understand (or attend to) the words of things sung in English. I --like, you know?--know the story and as he flies around earlier in the opera Mefistofeles sings "Huh! Huh!"

Having read Goethe's Faust (translated by Louis MacNeice) in a humanities course my sophomore year in college, I never bothered to read the libretto of "La Damnation de Faust." Only because we finished dinner early and caught most of the pre-concert lecture before a performance of the piece last month by the San Francisco Symphony (conducted by Charles Dutoit) did I learn that the people of hell don't speak/sing in French. Rather, they are saying/singing a language made up by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1722), a Swedish mystic whose visions influenced many (not least in America) during the mid-to-late-19th century (there is a Swedenborgian church in San Francisco).

Also, I had either failed to notice or forgotten that in Berlioz's version, Faust is not saved at the last moment. He signs over his soul very late and is carried off to hell (like Don Giovanni). That's, like, why it's called the Damnation Faust, stupid (me)!

The heavenly epilogue is the ascension to heaven of Marguerite (Gretchen in German), a naive lass ""whom love led astray." Not only do the celestial spirits in the epilogue "dry the tears that earthly sorrows still exact," but they restore her virginity en route from earth to heaven. Even more exalted still, the finale section in which children's chorus(es) join the adult chorus is labeled "Marguerite's Apotheosis." Last time, I checked, that means transformation into a god(dess), not merely ascension in to heaven.

The Recording

"The Damnation of Faust" is very long for a concert piece. With a pause to allow latecomers to be seated after the first part, it ran two and a quarter hours (without intermission) under Dutoit's baton. The total timing for Solti's recording is 2:07. The version I've had in two incarnations, under the baton of Colin Davis, clocks in at 2:11.

This is not particularly long for an opera (Berlioz's "Les Troyens" takes more than four hours), but is grueling for singers at subscription concerts. (The lead singers in opera houses do not sing on consecutive nights; I'm glad I caught the second night's performance.)

The title role is particularly grueling. Faust sings a lot.--more than Mefistofeles, and I'd estimate three times as much as Marguerite (Mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose, who sang it here, did not come on stage until more than an hour into the piece). The role reaches the height of lyricism in scene 16, the Invocation to Nature, and is followed by dialogue with Mefistofele and the ultra-dramatic Ride into the Abyss. I heard Jerry Hadley singe the role here in 1994, but can't remember if I thought he was more impressive than the tenors on my two recordings. Kenneth Riegel on the Solti recording is the most passionately lyrical of the three I've heard recently. (Jules Bastin on the Davis one is superior to Gregory Kunde's live one I recently heard).

I've heard Samuel Ramey sing the devil in many incarnations, including Berlioz's in the 1994 concert here. Jose van Dam (in the Solti recording) and Nikolai Gedda are both great Mefistofeles (and not just in Berlioz's music for him). (Sir) Willard White was quite powerful one (here last month) and acted the part (visually and well as vocally).

Marguerite's "Romance" (for mezzo and oboe alternating and then singing together, with light other orchestration eventually) is achingly beautiful. The London Symphony's oboist (David) seems a bit tentative in contrast to those of the Chicago Symphony (on Solti's recording) and the San Francisco Symphony (William Bennett),

Frederica von Stade sang Marguerite beautifully in the 1994 concert here and on the Solti recording. I thought that Ruxandra Donose sang it beautifully here last month, though my partner thought that her singing didn't sound very French. (The music is too gorgeous for me to have noticed; I thought the chorus's usually exact diction has blurred somewhat under its new director, though the sound they make continues to be ravishing.) I have no complaints about Josephine Veasey's singing on the Davis recording. I'd say Flicka is slightly more lyrical, Veasey's slightly more ardent. (And Donose's the darkest.)

Although my sense of what "The Damnation of Faust" is supposed to sound like was formed by the Colin Davis recording, I have to say that the tenor (Riegel), oboe, and chorus are better on the Solti recording, which also has superb sound engineering. The performances by mezzo, bass, and orchestra don't provide strong reasons to prefer one version. Berlioz's variegated orchestration colorations are impressive on both recordings.

I find the tempi sometimes a bit sluggish in both the Davis and Solti(!) recordings. I did not feel this at Dutoit's performance, but had singers and players and conductors to watch as well as to listen to. (Plus the suspense of waiting for the children's choruses to arrive--which they did at 10:05 of a concert that began at 8. This is longer even than the wait for the chorus to sing in Schoenberg's Gurrelieder!)

I think that Berlioz could have tightened the composition (he expanded the 8 scenes of the 1829-29 version, opus 1, to 20 in the 1846 Opus 24).

There is (or at least once was) a disc of selections from the Solti recording. It only runs 56:34 (less than half of the two-disc running time). The primary reason I would warn buyers/listeners away from this lean-and-mean recording is that it ends in hell rather than heaven. It is, as I reminded myself earlier, the Damnation of Faust, and the apotheosis of Marguerite is an epilogue. The epilogue runs about seven minutes and could easily have been included.

The problem is not just distortion of the shape of Berlioz's masterpiece. The arrival in hell is very loud followed by considerable clamor. There is not a clean-cut ending (let alone a climax!), 'cause there was more music coming, so the one-disc Solti recording ends with a whimper rather than an apotheosis. (What was he or London Records thinking?!)


© 2007 Stephen O. Murray



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