Music Review: ‘Faust’ during Met With Jonas Kaufmann and René Pape

The customary swat opposite “Faust” is that Gounod turns a characters into stereotypes, with strain to match. As Gounod presents him, Faust, an ill-natured aged philosopher who has sealed a agreement with a Devil, becomes only another in a line of hastily immature effort heroes pining for a immature lady and display off his tip notes. Gounod’s Méphistophélès seems distant too desirable to be malevolent; and a flattering immature Marguerite is a small shallow, soft as most by a box of wealth as by a immature Faust’s ardor.

Who cares? This musical uncover has been ensnaring audiences given a 1859 Paris premiere. Still, it is improved if a prolongation does not demeanour too deeply for elements of existential despondency that are simply not in a piece, and that seems a problem with a new “Faust” that a Metropolitan Opera presented on Tuesday night, a co-production with a English National Opera, destined by a two-time Tony Award leader Des McAnuff in his Met debut. (Mr. McAnuff’s acclaimed reconstruction of “Jesus Christ Superstar” is entrance to Broadway in a spring.)

Peter Gelb, a Met’s ubiquitous manager, who has been actively recruiting directors from a museum world, brought Mr. McAnuff into a “Faust” project. Tuesday’s opening was conducted by a impressively means Yannick Nézet-Séguin and starred a charismatic effort Jonas Kaufmann in a pretension role.

The production, yet abounding with ideas and theatrically daring, is finally rather clinical and oppressive. Mr. McAnuff intriguingly updates a story to a duration between a universe wars. Faust, customarily presented as an aged philosopher who feels he has squandered his life with impotent scholarship, is here a prime scientist, initial seen wearing a essential three-piece brownish-red suit. Faust works in a large laboratory where a atomic explosve is underneath development.

The entertainment uses some effective video segments, including huge, hypnotizing black-and-white close-ups of Faust’s and Marguerite’s faces. There are moments of painful disadvantage in a thespian performances that Mr. McAnuff draws from a gifted cast. we will not shortly forget one picture of a willowy soprano Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite, her hair shorn short, wearing a relaxed blue jail dress and thick leather shoes. She is placed in a temporary jail cell, carrying killed, in a fit of madness, a baby she gimlet Faust.

But a grimness and irony that emanate a prolongation feel imposed on Gounod’s opera, not drawn from it. During a initial theatre we suspicion we was going to be swept away. Robert Brill’s section set is built of metallic, three-tiered scaffolding with turn stairways and balconies on both sides. Yes, tiered sets are apropos customary emanate in new Met productions. But this one is placed during a back of a stage, not a front, and it frames a movement dramatically, during slightest during first. But before long, this complicated lead set feels constricting and intrusive.

As a strain started, huddled masses walked solemnly opposite a stage: disfigured figures, presumably a cursed souls whose ranks Faust would shortly join. Though rather heavy-handed, it was a distinguished steer that prisoner a mood of a orchestral introduction, with a entwining lines and pithy harmonies, conveyed grippingly in a elegant, darkly textured opening Mr. Nézet-Séguin drew from a Met orchestra.

Soon a theatre was filled with choristers portraying a scientists on a project, all in white lab coats with note pads in hand. (The costumes are by Paul Tazewell.) Méphistophélès, here a unusual drum René Pape, appears as a clean-cut gentlemen in a cream-white fit holding a imagination cane. Imagine a sinful William Powell. To uncover a Devil transforming a aging Faust into an fervent immature man, Mr. McAnuff relies on good out-of-date theatre smoke: Mr. Kaufmann disappears into a cloud and emerges in a relating white suit, now Méphistophélès’s protégé. we wish a prolongation had had some-more touches as witty as this one.

The side staircases gave Faust and Méphistophélès vantage points from that to watch a throng during a motel in Act II, as Valentin, Marguerite’s protecting hermit (the stout baritone Russell Braun), and his crony Wagner (Jonathan Beyer, a fresh-voiced immature baritone in a Met debut) join soldiers going off to war. Singing his chilling strain about a golden calf, Mr. Pape’s Méphistophélès generally relishes a line that “Satan led a dance.” At that impulse a dancing throng breaks into twisted, wild gyrations (the work of choreographer Kelly Devine).

But we could not suppose what was going on when a integrate of soldiers manipulated a enormous saluting infantryman puppet. And during a finish of Act III, when Marguerite succumbs to Faust’s entreaties and Méphistophélès laughs in triumph, another enormous figure appears, this one a grievous thing in a black cloak. Was it Voldemort, come to “Faust”?

Though a singers gave their all, this barbiturate of a prolongation infrequently undermined their work. Mr. Kaufmann, a Met luminary who recently achieved a rare strain recital on a Met stage, was a handsome, vocally superb Faust. He sang a thinking and regretful passages with potential dusky colorings and proposal lyricism, and unleashed restrained energy in full-bodied phrases, capped by intrepid high notes.

Ms. Poplavskaya is a spontaneous, uninhibited artist whose singing, however compelling, can be disproportionate and quirky, as it infrequently was here. Still, her sound was shimmering, plush and penetrating. She excelled in a pleasing “Ballad of a King of Thule,” with a Renaissance-tinged modal harmonies. And in a “Jewel Song,” in that Marguerite discovers a box of goodies, her scintillating coloratura runs, if not wholly accurate, were heady and ebullient.

Mr. Pape’s vocally thundering Méphistophélès was all suavity and calculation. The mezzo-soprano Michèle Losier brought a abounding voice and impishness to a pants purpose of Siébel, Faust’s student, who loves Marguerite.

The excellent singing and a intense personification of a band were weighed down by a entertainment in a final scene. The confused Marguerite regains her reason, resists Faust’s entreaties and prays for emancipation in a mountainous melody. Her emancipation is announced by an affirming astronomical carol and pealing organ. There is zero pointed about it.

Here, as Marguerite resolutely climbs tiers of stairs to accommodate her celestial reward, a choristers, still in white lab coats, mount on a side balconies and stairs, looking infrequently serious. In a final picture Mr. Kaufmann re-emerges as a sap aged Faust in his study, who this time successfully completes his self-murder by poison.

Was this a Devil’s approach of harsh his due? Was a whole part with Marguerite Faust’s dream? The finale of “Faust” is not accurately ambiguous. The one thing no one in a assembly should feel is confused.

“Faust” continues by Jan. 19 during a Metropolitan Opera House; (212) 362-6000, metopera.org.