Terry Gillam's (Berlioz's) The Damnation of Faust

My title says it all. This evening, I saw Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust (La damnation de Faust), sung in English, in a new production by director Terry Gilliam at ENO. I've not heard the music before and being a HUGE fan of Symphonie Fantasique just had to go see it!

I admit that I'm not familiar with (most of) Terry Gilliam's films, so I was really looking forward to the production since I was very much on terra incognita. After all, it's not often that a professional musician gets to hear music that s/he is not already familiar with. I will admit that I am also a fan of the Faust story generally, whether (Werther? ha ha) Goethe's, Marlowe's, or Gounoud's (which I saw earlier this year, also at ENO), I think the general topoi of the redemption of man, good vs. evil, and sin are (of course) best explored in opera, so I was stoked.

Perhaps I shouldn't have had such high expectations. I wont say that it was a let down, but I'll admit, for a Berlioz/opera lover, I was a little bored. On the one hand, the production itself was great: a sumptuous feast for the eyes that was visually stunning! Terry Gilliam's astoundingly creative influence shined through every detail, however small or large. The attention to the environment--in in terms of both the sets, costumes, and scenes of troop movement--was remarkable. The production was almost too real, a simulacrum of reality and an elusive dreamland impervious to the horrors of Time.

Despite this impressive production, I felt nevertheless that it either distracted from the music in a way that bordered on overbearing or was designed to obscure Berlioz's music because it isn't that great. I don't think it's bad music, and I do believe it can be successfully adapted to the operatic stage (it was written as a 'dramatic legend, something between oratorio and opera), but in this production I'm not sure one would be able to tell, especially not having heard it before. So while I found the production itself to be wonderful, I felt that it failed as an overall dramatic presentation.

Just a few years ago, Gilliam's production would've been highly avant-garde, despite his perhaps unintentional appropriation of historical performance practice. Berlioz's Faust premièred in 1846, when grand opéra--and the Paris Opéra (Opéra-Comique), home and birthplace of the genre--was approaching its zenith. A textbook example of a production that invites comparisons to grand opéra because of its production values as event-theatre, 'epic theatre,' satire, and spectacle would be Gilliam's. Besides these colorful checkmarks, Gilliam also made extensive use of video technology and projectors, placing him at the cutting edge of theatrical machinery used to enhance an audience's opinion of the work. Indeed, the Paris Opéra consistently (due to its huge financial subsidy from the French Government) had backdrops and sets that rivaled those at La Scala, if not surpassed them. 'Deus ex machina' means 'God out of nothing,' a plot device used to save operatic characters from certain death and damnation, often involving elaborate mechanical machinery for which the Paris Opéra spared no expense. The same type of machinery was present at ENO, though I'm not sure it succeeded in fulfilling its role as savoir of the production. Still, Gilliam should receive credit for his perfectionist attention.

I think there is something to be said about the opera itself. After all, shouldn't the music have fought back? At least negated in some way the slowly encroaching noose of the production? Probably. But as a 'dramatic legend,' it was never actually meant to be staged, so the dramatic pacing, musically, is somewhat skewed towards the obvious--Faust is damned (no chance throughout of redemption); Mephistopheles is evil (but for some reason very funny); Marguerite is saved (no development)--at the expense of the abstract. I think the music supports this as well. It is very forgettable music, save one or two moments. Without a moment of approach to an apogee of emotional or intellectual investment, I find it difficult to savor any of the performance. And that is decidedly what this production lacked: drama. A superb narrative! But one without any of that, what I consider to be "true" drama.

Music or drama or any other artistic something should evoke emotion. Yes, I am perpetuating what is perhaps an outdated ideology that relies upon the power of the "work," but seriously: who doesn't expose themselves to art in order to feel, to be moved? This production bordered often on the artificial, it seemed too contrived. I will hate myself for saying this, but it seemed also that the image of the rise of Nazi Germany as allegory for the fall or corruption of man was super stale, almost cliché. The production created a work that was essentially a too-easily-decoded diatribe against the ills of modernity, I think negating any other major message that might be produced by the Faust story set to Berlioz's music. This element was in every scene, and saturated every moment of the opera. Literally from beginning to end. I'm not trying to be high-brow, just honest, since this is my blog. I will admit, however, that the final scene in which Marguerite ascends into heaven from amidst a pile of bodies in a mass grave, the dark moonlight shining down divinely on her eerily pale face, snow "falling" all around, was strikingly beautiful.