From the Heights

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 285, 8 December 1944, Page 8

From the Heights

AFTER hearing Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus from 4YA on a Sunday afternoon, I looked forward to hearing Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust the same evening. I was disappointed to find that it was the hoary evergreen Faust of Gounod which was to be given. Dr. Faustus, as read by Godfrey Kenton, was impressive in the extreme. The last scene, with a repentant Faust, appalled by his inevitable doom, spending his last hour in futile remorse, swept the listener magnificently into those metaphysical realms where the soul seldom ventures. After these heights, it seemed the essence of anti-climax to listen to Gounod. The singing was good, of course, with most of the soloists we heard in New Zealand during the Centennial presentation of this opera. But sung in any language save that intended, an opera seems as strange as a picture painted in the wrong colours. Those banalities of the script which we overlook in a foreign tongue become immediately apparent in English, and the opera, like most operas, seems to contain a preponderance of let-us-aways and come-comes and _ ah-no-it-cannot-bes. The script-writers who supplied Gounod with his words, used only a part of Goethe’s Faust, the love story of Faust and Margherita; and shorn of all save the obvious trappings of the supernatural, the plot is just another seduction, and not a graceful one at that.

ae bd > At least Marlowe’s Faustus is as noble in his desires as a poet can make him, since he aspires to none other than Helen of Troy, in the unforgettable line, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?" Gounod’s Faust, of course, being under the spell of Mephistopheles, may be excused a little for his conduct, but in these days when belief in a personal Devil has shrunk to a minimum among opera-goers, it seems incredible that Faust’s higher instincts couldn’t have got the better of him just once in the play. The music swamps the absurd libretto in a flood of melody. It is difficult to believe that one opera by one composer could contain so many popular favourites, the Calf of Gold, Soldiers’ Chorus, Loving Heart of Sister Kind, the Flower and Jewel Songs, and so on through a long list, Indeed, the opera is a complete string of popular arias with a minimum of connecting recitatives. However, on this occasion I was looking forward to Berlioz, and I felt in the mood of the listener who exclaimed, "Rather Gounod than no Faust, but rather any Faust than Gounod’s!"