Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924)
Doktor Faust, opera in three acts with two prologues and an intermezzo (1925)
Version completed by Philipp Jarnach. Libretto by the composer.
Doktor Faust: Dietrich Henschel (baritone)
Mephistopheles: Daniel Brenna (tenor)
Wagner, Master of Ceremonies: Wilhelm Schwinghammer (bass)
Soldier, Duke of Parma: Joseph Dahdah (tenor)
Duchess of Parma: Olga Bezsmertna (soprano)
Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino / Cornelius Meister
Davide Livermore (stage direction)
rec. live, 14 February 2023, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Florence, Italy
Synopsis in Italian and English
Dynamic 57998 Blu-ray [166]
Ferruccio Busoni based Doktor Faust not on Goethe but on the older legend, the puppet play, with some influence of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus. There is a pact with Mephistopheles, and a magic book. The Gretchen theme is touched on only in passing. The main action, beginning with Act One or “First Tableau”, concerns Faust’s exploits at the court of Parma, at which he summons apparitions of famous historical couples and seduces the newlywed Duchess. Act Two, set in a tavern in Wittenberg, includes a dispute between Catholic and Protestant students. Mephistopheles announces the Duchess’s death, then turns her new-born bay to straw, and burns it. He evokes Helen of Troy for Faust.
In Act Three, the students return and demand back the book which Faust has destroyed. He gives alms to a poor beggarwoman whom he realises is the Duchess. Mephistopheles appears as a night watchman. She hands him her dead child. Christ on the crucifix turns into Helen. As midnight nears, when Faust must die, he lays the child’s corpse on the snow, draws a magic circle around it, steps inside it, and as he falls dead, a young man emerges from the child’s body and departs. Mephistopheles takes away Faust’s body.
Busoni died before his opera was finished. His pupil Philipp Jarnach made the completion used here. In 1982, the leading Busoni authority Antony Beaumont found more material and produced a fuller ending. That ending can be heard on the Erato audio recording conducted by Kent Nagano. Dynamic’s claim of “World Premiere on Video” is wrong: the 2007 Arthaus DVD and Blu-ray release from Zurich Opera might still be available. Phillipe Jordan conducted a fine cast led by Thomas Hampson and Gregory Kunde as Faust and Mephistopheles in the Jarnach completion.
After an orchestral prelude (“Symphonia”) we hear Busoni’s spoken prologue “The poet addresses the spectators” declaimed by various of voices against a backdrop with a series of Busoni portraits. The whole cast have hand-held Busoni masks to cover their faces from time to time. If this is to make the point that the composer identified completely with Doktor Faust, it seems rather laboured after a while.
The settings have plenty of spectacle, much of it from elaborate and evocative video projections (credited to D-Wok; video direction by Matteo Richetti). The ‘set’ is uncluttered and spacious, allowing plenty of room for some large projection effects. The Second Prologue (“Vorspiel II”) is a good place to sample these effects. A giant hourglass symbolises the time that will soon run out for Faust. In Act One of the main action, huge art projections onto a back curtain show the famous couples from history that Faust conjures, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Samson and Delilah, Salome and John the Baptist. The appearance of Helen is conjured by a giant flame red sky with a giant pair of eyes, no more. When Christ on the cross turns into Helen, that is also achieved with video.
Davide Livermore’s production has some unpersuasive alterations. In the Intermezzo, a Soldier, Gretchen’s brother, prays for justice for his sister and vengeance on Faust. This takes place in a church, and we hear suitably solemn organ music. But instead of a church we are in a morgue. Mephistopheles arranges for the soldier to be slain. He rejoices that Faust, who endorsed the slaying, has now committed murder and blasphemy – but the latter complaint requires the libretto’s designated church setting to be plausible.
Similarly, Faust acquires a satyr companion, hirsute, bare-breasted and horned. Therę is no satyr in the libretto, and his purpose is not clear, except perhaps to symbolise lust. Costumes are modern or last-century, so that in the tavern scene the students of Wittenberg are implausibly well-dressed. They are seated, mostly unmoving in rows across the stage throughout their religious “debate”, except for some who stand at the back. The final scene, rather truncated, omits even the magic circle and the emergent young man, which surely Busoni intended as an important closing symbolic image.
The cast offer some compensation. Dietrich Henschel sang Faust in Nagano’s audio version in 1998. There is inevitably less sap in the voice now, but he acts and sings well enough. Daniel Brenna’s Mephistopheles copes with the high tessitura of the role, which presumably Busoni intended as a strange sound from another world, but Brenna is inevitably a bit stressed in some moments. Olga Bezsmertna’s Duchess is not always secure – and hers is the only female solo role, rather brief. The two male leads dominate the stage, so this was not the night to hear a variety of fine singing. Wilhelm Schwinghammer, who doubles the roles of Wagner and Master of Ceremonies, sings and acts well in both. Joseph Dahdah brings the best of the male voices to the roles of Soldier and the Duke of Parma. The Choir of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino are very good, as usual.
The orchestral playing is always competent. The score might not be very familiar to the players, and some tempi, especially in the orchestral interludes, can seem to drag. Conductor Cornelius Meister does not quite persuade us with his belief in the piece, which is sometimes referred to as one of the greatest of 20th century operas. But then this is a record of just one night’s performance, with no chance to select passages that went better on other occasions in the run. Certainly there is enough here to suggest that on a different occasion the same forces could well deliver an even better account of this fascinating piece.
The filming and recording are up to the usual standards which Dynamic achieves in Florence.
Roy Westbrook
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Other cast and production staff
Florian Stern (tenor): Lieutenant
Marcell Bakonyi (bass): Law student and Levis
Martin Piskorski (tenor), Marian Pop (baritone), Lukas Konieczny (bass): students from Kraków
Dominic Barberi (bass): Theologian, Gravis
Zachary Wilson (baritone): Scientist, Asmodus
Franz Gürtelschmied (tenor): Student, Beelzebub
Ewandro Stenzowski (tenor): Megaros
Diego Mingolia: Assistant director
Giò Forma: Set designer
Mariana Fracasso: Costume designer
Fiammetta Baldiserri: Lighting designer
Matteo Richetti: Video director
Technical details
Video format: NTSC 16:9 1080i60
Sound format: PCM Stereo 2.0/DTS HD Master Audio 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Sung in German
Subtitles: Italian, English, French, German, Korean, Japanese
