The Restricted Review: Faust – Opera National de Paris

(Rated 5/5) I would say that now having been twice to the Opera National de Paris, with my wonderful classical-music loving Trobador Dad – first to Giacomo Puccini’s ‘Turandot’ (superbly impressive and – aside from exquisite arias etc - we really enjoyed Ping, Pang & Pong’s dancing), and second Charles Gounod’s ‘Faust’ – Opera is winning me over. I would still say the accessibility of Musical Theatre is my preference. As I discussed with Dad, I love too that in a musical each key character has their own song, which completely, utterly and immensely movingly encompasses literally everything about them and the part they play in the story. For me, Eponine’s ‘On My Own’ in ‘Les Miserables’ or Freddie’s ‘Pity the Child’ in ‘Chess’ are two perfect examples. Of course, there are also duets and ensemble numbers, but like in a TV show where a musical theme may be associated with a particular character – eg. Clara’s theme in ‘Doctor Who’ – that little song theme recurs when the character is singing in ensemble… ‘One More Day All On My Own’ – Eponine in ‘One More Day’, Les Miserables.

In Opera you have amazing arias, libretto, bel canto, cadenza, coloratura, obbligato, leitmotif (actually the Opera version of the musical phrases for a particular character), portamento, recitative, trills and vibrato all within highly-skilled beautiful classical music scores, and well, that’s the draw isn’t it?! As you can see, I’m on a learning curve here! And obviously, musicals developed over time from opera, so today, they are now quite close! It also really helps the accessibility of Opera, that these days the words are in captions – in this case in French and English – above the stage. The programme also includes an explanation of the story, characters and summary of each act, without giving away the power of directly experiencing the themes, music and philosophy of each piece in performance, so you’re not really getting ‘spoilers’, but rather an added understanding by reading all of that in advance.

As Dad said Faust takes himself far too seriously, and sacrificing spiritual or moral values for material gain, knowledge or power – or in Gounod’s Faust’s case to be able to enjoy intimacy with young beautiful women by selling his soul to Mephistopheles in return for his youth – is not going to end well! There’s also a strong religious component in Gounod’s Faust. So, in may ways, much that does not quite resonate with we two audience members, however we were blown away by it. The singing from all – but especially tenor Pene Pati as Faust, soprano Amina Edris as Marguerite and bass Alex Esposito as Mephistopheles – was exceptional! And for that alone it is well worth being there! Emmanuel Villaume took charge of the direction musicale to perfection. The staging was out of this world literally, not only using impressive stage sets, but film of Faust and Mephistopheles flying over, or riding on horseback through Paris and Notre Dame on fire! Mephistopheles devils plague the characters and we see that play out on the stage as well as in close-up film taken as the action occurs in situ. Poor Marguerite is even tormented by Mephistopheles on the Paris Metro – well we could sympathise with that having experienced travelling on the Metro lol!