BERLIOZ: La Damnation de Faust.(Review)

BERLIOZ: La Damnation de Faust [] Kasarova; Groves, White, Macco; Staatskapelle Berlin, Cambreling. Arthaus DVD 100 018, 146 mins.

For those eager for the rare opportunity to see a fully staged version of La Damnation de Faust, this DVD of the 1999 Salzburg Festival production should prove fascinating, if sometimes maddening. Full of visual pyrotechnics and the latest cyber-techniques, the staging by Alex Olle and Carlos Badrissa of the Spanish theater troupe La Fura dels Baus sometimes overwhelms the music (quite a trick with Berlioz) and aims for the gratuitous effect. (A lengthy overview of the plot in the liner notes explains the concept.)

The focus of the action is a gigantic, four-story cylinder, designed by sculptor Jaume Plensa, used in multiple ingenious ways. In the first scene, Faust, clad in white, with a milk-can strapped to his back, encounters the similarly costumed chorus emerging from this structure to watch a solar eclipse, the point of which seems to be to show off some striking lighting effects and introduce the obvious symbols of darkness and light, consistent throughout the production. (Mephistopheles, wearing a gleaming black-vinyl coat and skullcap, gives Faust a black patent-leather shoe as an example of granting his "plus ardent desir;" Marguerite sheds her virginal white cloak to reveal a black sheath; Faust's descent into corruption is marked by his gradually matching Mephistopheles's wardrobe.) The cylinder serves to link the scenes, enhanced by video projections, becoming at various times a smelting furnace, a liquefying chamber, a pit of hell, a tower of heaven. Stunning images include the ride to the abyss and the subsequent spectacle of a Bosch-like hell; pointless and distracting moments are the projections of a close-up of the conductor, during the Menuet des Follets, and all the lyrics of Brander's song of the rat.

The principals handle the complexities of the staging admirably for the most part. Paul Groves's Faust is ardent and sincere; his impeccable diction and phrasing are most effective in the lyrical passages. Willard White is a powerful Mephistopheles, more vehement than sardonic. Vesselina Kasarova, the seductive Marguerite, misses the mark in ...