Charles Gounod: Faust

28.01.2022

Opera production

Overview

Disconnected, tired of the search for knowledge, eaten up by disgust with life - and plagued by suicidal thoughts - Doctor Faust calls for Satan. Méphistophélès appears and makes a pact with Faust: Faust's hunger for youth and intoxicating love encounters is to be satisfied - but in the afterlife he must be at the service of the satanic power. Faust's scruples are removed by the appearance of an innocent beauty ...

Musical direction
gernot Sahler Scenic direction
alexander von Pfeil Stage
sophie Thammer Costumes
felicitas Stecher Chorus direction
niuniu-Miao Liu Dramaturgy
malte Krasting Acting coaching
natalie Forester

About production

It is quite impossible ... Goethe was rather skeptical of Eckermann's idea of adapting his Faust poem into an opera: "It is quite impossible. The repulsive, repugnant, terrible things that it would have to contain in places are repugnant to the times. The music would have to be in the character of "Don Juan". Mozart would have had to compose "Faust". Meyerbeer would perhaps be capable of it. Goethe also speculated that his somber work, set in a "manifold, yet banal setting," would be "much clearer and more intentional" in the French language. However, it was not the established master of the French grand opéra - Giacomo Meyerbeer - but the 40-year-old, still rather unknown (church) composer Charles Gounod who was given the task of decisively opening up Goethe's opus magnum to musical theater. The model for the opera, which premiered in 1859 at the Théatre-Lyrique in Paris, was Michel Carré's boulevard play "Faust et Marguerite," a radical compression on the tragedy of Gretchen, the central motif of the young Goethe: this early version of Faust by the Sturm und Drang poet was written under the immediate impression of the execution of the Frankfurt child murderer Susanna Margaretha Brandt (in January 1772).

Dates & Cast

28. January 2022, 7:00 p.m.
January 29, 2022, 4:30 p
.m. January 31, 2022, 7:00 p.m. (Livestream)
February 01, 2022, 7:00 p.m
. Max Schlereth Saal

Faust: Daehwan Kim
Méphistophélès: Max Tavella
Valentin: Taesung Kim
Wagner: Xiaofei Liu
Marguerite: Margarita Polonskaya
Siébel: Lyriel Benameur
Marthe: Tamara Nüßl
Chorus: Vsevolod Chernyshev, Gordana Dekic, Judith Gallmetzer, Livia Hübel, Thorhildur Kristinsdottir, Olaia Lamata, Charlotte Langner, Elias Mädler, Imola Máté, Lucas Pellbäck, Gabriel Günther Rupp, Iván Sánchez-Águila, Jovana Timotijevic, Mengqian Xu

Faust: Chanyoung Kim
Méphistophélès: Alexander Voronov
Valentin: Xiaofei Liu
Wagner: Taesung Kim
Marguerite: Veronika Loy
Siébel: Tamara Nüßl
Marthe: Olaia Lamata
Chorus: Vsevolod Chernyshev, Gordana Dekic, Judith Gallmetzer, Livia Hübel, Thorhildur Kristinsdottir, Olaia Lamata, Charlotte Langner, Elias Mädler, Imola Máté, Lucas Pellbäck, Gabriel Günther Rupp, Iván Sánchez-Águila, Jovana Timotijevic, Mengqian Xu

Gernot Sahler shapes the orchestra to sound rhetorical play and enormous force, also the choir has immediate presence ... a successful opera production, as one does not experience it too often in Salzburg.

— Florian Oberhummer, Salzburger Nachrichten (January 30, 2022)

Gallery

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