Carles Gounod’ Faust after the Goethe tragedy enjoys pride of place among the operas that captured Russian hearts back in the 19th century. The opera almost immediately gained popularity in Russia. The Bolshoi Theatre staged the first version in 1866, just seven years after the Paris premiere.
Faust is quite literally part of Russian and Moscow opera culture. Among the exited admirers of this piece was a young doctor who later became a famous writer and playwright, Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940). Gounod’s opera is a recurrent character in Bulgakov’s work, and it is mentioned in the novel Master and Margarita.
The Novaya Opera Theatre presents its Faust in the year of the 150th anniversary of the opera’s Moscow premiere, and of the 125th anniversary of Mikhail Bulgakov’s birth. In this production, made by stage director Ekaterina Odegova and dramatist and opera critic Mikhail Muginshtein, Goethe’s and Gounod’s characters will possess recognizable Moscow features.
Says Mikhail Muginshtein, Dramatist:
The German-French matrix Goethe-Gounod will appear not only in the traditional way, but also in a dialogue with Bulgakov’s “faustianism” (when a student, the writer saw the opera41 times!). The culturology of the novel /Master and Margarita/is in many aspects determined by Bulgakov’s specific projection of Goethe and Gounod onto the Moscow ground. The coincidence of the heroine’s name, Margarita, is quite deliberate (the German opera has the same name). Allusions with an inner ring are also obvious: Goethe’s tragedy is reflected in the novel not only directly, but also through the mock mirror of Gounod’s opera (there are a number of peculiarities). Inspiring are not the parallels, but the intricate optics of the novel: interreflections of the semantics, playing with time and space (Satan “was at Pilate’s, and he was also at Kant’s for breakfast, and now he is paying a visit to Moscow”), avoiding simple linear action, etc. It is not that easy to re-intonate “the most operatic opera”. Making play around /Faust/’s clichés, an attempt can be made to accentuate again in the myth of European culture the ever-relevant problems: “human condition in the world”, the eternal choice between good and evil.
Synopsis
Act I
A small, peaceful village, bathed in sunlight. It is inhabited
by simple, artless people. Giselle, a young peasant girl, is rejoicing in
the sun, the blue sky, the singing of the birds and, most of all, in the
happiness of pure, trusting love which has lit up her life. She is in love and
is confident that she is loved. The gamekeeper, who is in love with Giselle,
tries in vain to persuade her that Albrecht, her loved one, is not a
peasant at all but a nobleman in disguise and that he is deceiving her.
The gamekeeper manages to steal into the cottage which Albrecht is renting in
the village and here he finds a silver sword with a coat of arms on it. Now the
gamekeeper knows for sure that Albrecht is concealing his noble origins.
A party of distinguished noblemen, attended by a sumptuous suite, seek rest
and refreshment in the village after the hunt. The peasants give their guests a
cordial welcome.
Albrecht is embarrassed by this unexpected meeting: he
tries to hide the fact he knows them for, in their company, is his betrothed,
Bathilde. Meanwhile the gamekeeper shows everyone Albrecht’s sword and,
unmasking him, tells them of the latter’s deceit. Giselle is shocked to the core
by the perfidy of her loved one. The pure, crystal-clear world of her faith,
hopes and dreams has been destroyed. She goes mad and dies.
Act II
Night-time. The ghostly forms of the Wilis, died brides, appear among the
graves of the village church yard which is bathed in moonlight. "Dressed in
bridal gowns and garlands of flowers…The irresistibly beautiful Wilis
danced to the light of the moon. And as they felt the time given them for
dancing was running out and that they had again to return to their icy graves,
their dancing became more and more impassioned and rapid…" (Heinrich
Heine).
The Wilis catch sight of the gamekeeper who, suffering
from pangs of conscience, has come to visit Giselle’s grave. At the command
of Myrtha, the unrelenting Queen of the Wilis, the Wilis encircle the gamekeeper
and make him dance until he drops lifeless, to the ground.
Albrecht too, is unable to forget Giselle. And, at dead of night, he
comes to her grave. The Wilis immediately encircle the youth. Albrecht
is now threatened by the same horrifying fate as the gamekeeper. But the
shadow of Giselle now appears and her eternal and self-sacrificing love protects
and saves Albrecht from the anger of the Wilis.
The ghostly, white forms of the Wilis vanish with the first rays of the
rising sun. And Giselle’s ethereal shadow vanishes too, but Giselle will
always be alive in Albrecht’s memory - the ever-present regret for a lost love,
a love that is stronger than death.