Gounod's Faust at the Metropolitan Opera, New York.(Charles Gounod)

The Metropolitan Opera has had a long relationship with Gounod's once popular opera Faust, beginning with its first night in 1883 and coming up so often thereafter that the house was dubbed the Faustspielhaus. The Met has had far less success with Faust recently, in part because the opera's vocal and dramatic charms have withered--although a Peter Brook production in 1953 woke the audience by moving the action to the nineteenth century. This device was repeated by the production which debuted on April 21, directed by Andrei Serban and designed by Santo Loquasto.

The piece's historical moment mattered less than the intent of the creators, for Serban (as is typical with him) saw this exercise in tunefulness and charm as an excuse for spectacle, cluttering the stage with extras (humunculi, devils, and other figures) and having Mephisto change costumes incessantly (someone suggested the idea as being representative of the complete iconography of the character in art). Loquasto's darkling set for the second act Kermesse brought the events not to a town in medieval Germany but around the crowded corner from the Cafe Momus in Paris--a place Marguerite would never stroll for an evening unchaperoned. But then, any production that ends with Marguerite going to heaven and meeting winged angels cannot be divorced entirely from camp--not even for Gounod.

To be sure, Faust has never lived on its settings, but always--from its grand opera days, anyway--on its singing. In this regard the Met put forward its A Team, most of which performed admirably under the baton of Music Director James Levine (his first Faust!) and with an orchestra that played the work with immense suavity and beauty. In any Faust performance, the role of Mephisto must take precedence, for histrionics if not ...