Music by Charles Gounod
Libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carre
The opera Faust is one of the most popular French operas, second only to Carmen, but some individual arias and songs from it are even more popular as stage “hits” – Marguerite’s “jewel song”, Siebel’s romance, Valentin’s cavatina, Mephistophelès’ couplets and serenade and Faust’s cavatina. Today it is hard to believe that the first production at the Theâtre Lyrique in Paris enjoyed little success – the public did not like it and no publisher agreed to print the score. Antoine Choudens was the most shrewd publisher (later he was the first to print Bizet’s Carmen and works by the young Debussy). Having purchased the rights to the masterpiece, despite its lack of popularity, Choudens was also its first “producer”, fervently offering Faust to other theatres. In 1860 this French opera was performed at German theatres. And only after the opera began its triumphant march from one European and American theatre to another (it was staged in New York in 1863) did it finally come to the attention of the Opera de Paris where it was staged in 1869, though for this to take place the composer had to add the ballet scene Walpurgis Night. The same year, on 15 September 1869, the opera was staged at the Mariinsky Theatre.
The opera is now being staged by Isabella Bywater, who has already worked at the Mariinsky Theatre as a production designer for Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream (production by Claudia Solti). Faust is Bywater’s first work as a production director. Isabella Bywater is convinced that there is a hidden danger in the music: “It is interesting to listen to beautiful music while at the same time dark forces are afoot on-stage. This incredible counterpoint influences your view of the music – you hear its beauty but at the same time you sense the danger.”
The lead roles are being rehearsed by Khachatur Badalyan, Sergei Semishkur, Alexander Trofimov, Dmitry Voropaev and Nikolai Yemtsov (Dr Faust), Irina Churilova, Yekaterina Goncharova, Violetta Lukyanenko, Oxana Shilova and Eleonora Vindau (Marguerite), Askar Abdrazakov, Ildar Abdrazakov, Vladimir Felyauer and Alexei Tanovitsky (Méphistophélès), Viktor Korotich, Alexei Markov, Vladimir Moroz and Vladislav Sulimsky (Valentin), Nikolai Kamensky, Yevgeny Ulanov and Grigor Verner (Wagner), Yulia Matochkina, Yekaterina Sergeyeva, Irina Shishkova and Mayram Sokolova (Siébel) and Elena Vitman and Svetlana Volkova (Marthe).
© Mariinsky Theatre
Faust is a grand opera in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carre from Carre's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1. It debuted at the Theвtre Lyrique on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris on 19 March 1859.
Faust was rejected by the Paris Opera, on the grounds that it was not sufficiently "showy", and its appearance at the Theatre-Lyrique was delayed for a year because Adolphe d'Ennery's drama Faust was playing at the Porte St. Martin. The manager Leon Carvalho (who cast his wife Marie Miolan-Carvalho as Marguerite) insisted on various changes during production, including cutting several numbers.
Faust was not initially well-received. The publisher Antoine Choudens, who purchased the copyright for 10,000 francs, took the work (with added recitatives replacing the original spoken dialogue) on tour through Germany, Belgium, Italy and England, with Marie Miolan-Carvalho repeating her role.
It was revived in Paris in 1862, and was a hit. A ballet had to be inserted before the work could be played at the Opera in 1869: it became the most frequently performed opera at that house and a staple of the international repertory, which it remained for decades, being translated into at least 25 languages.
Its popularity and critical reputation have declined somewhat since around 1950. A full production, with its large chorus and elaborate sets and costumes, is an expensive undertaking, particularly if the act 5 ballet is included. However, it appears as number 35 on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide.
It was Faust with which the Metropolitan Opera in New York City opened for the first time on 22 October 1883. It is the eighth most frequently performed opera there, with 747 performances through the 2011-2012 season. It was not until the period between 1965 and 1977 that the full version was performed (and then with some minor cuts), and all performances in that production included the Walpurgisnacht and the ballet.