From the "Devil goes to Hollywood" department, the Metropolitan Opera production of Hector Berlioz's 1846 The Damnation of Faust is 90% production and 10% opera. Or maybe it's just 100% highly produced opera? If you have ADD, this is the opera for you!
I loved it for the spectacle, which tended to overshadow the singing, but I quickly got over my snobbish resistance - "They call this an opera? It's a light show!" - and settled in to enjoy it. It's sensory overload with arias.
Imagine a four story, 12-block Hollywood Squares set up of connected cubbyholes, with steel girders framing a series of "green screens" (you know, the ones they use for weather reports where you can project anything on it). The singers emerge and reflect giving everything a surreal, dream-like warmth, and are supported by a troupe of dancers and acrobats, along with the largest chorus I've seen in an opera. The chorus suddenly appears throughout the show, beautifully supporting the music, and every time I was amazed. Where did they come from? How did they get 50 singers on stage without any of us noticing?! That is the power of the screens which drape the entire stage structure.
The screens are used to create depth, warmth, surprise and terror as they transport us from dusty library to raucous tavern to cool fields in autumn to a quiet mansion to the consuming fires of love that Mezzo Soprano Susan Graham sings beautifully as a simulcast of herself is projected in giant form behind her. Is this a rock concert? Am I still at the Met?
As Faust prays, the daring acrobats appear to hang from nowhere as Jesus on the crucifix - suddenly they are there, bathed in red light atop a white cross - first one, then six men hanging... and suddenly, they are gone as the lights shift, music breaks and Faust looks up from prayer to see the devil himself mocking his piety. The bass-baritone John Relyea who plays Mephistopheles (devil) was the best of the singers, with his long red feather cap giving him a rakish and spooky devilish posture. But then again, I'm a sucker for both the baritone, and the bad boy!
At the end, Faust literally plummets three stories to hell - where the male chorus stands shirtless and bathed in bright flames. They stand motionless, condemned to a horrible fate, and the deep music rumbles under our seats and around the building. They have become immune to beauty and stand in terror-induced stupor. Even the singing stops when the unspeakable "welcome" by the Devil to Faust begins.
Imagine the precision of the production - where the projections, lighting, dancers and acrobats must accommodate to live music - and a four story stage. It was truly awesome.
It makes total sense that producer Robert LePage is of Cirque du Soliel fame - you can see it in the fantastic production value. It's high tech, and high art - and classical music. I left with stars in my eyes, literally blinking from the constant motion on stage, and of course humming the final crescendo.
