Faust, Opera

This is French opera at his best, before this authentic style was gone: beautiful silver tones from a now lost period. I bought this record more than 40 years ago and it is still unpassed.

Double Tony Award winning stage director Desmond McAnuff s production, hailed by the New York Times as rich with ideas and theatrically daring , presents Faust as an atomic scientist inhabiting a dark world shot through with Cold War resonances. Alongside Kaufmann, a typically gold-standard Met cast includes the phenomenal René Pape as Méphistophélès and the ideally-suited Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite. Star conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin draws an elegant, darkly textured performance from the Metropolitan Opera orchestra.

Double Tony Award winning stage director Desmond McAnuff’s production, hailed by the New York Times as “rich with ideas and theatrically daring”, presents Faust as an atomic scientist inhabiting a dark world shot through with Cold War resonances. Alongside Kaufmann, a typically gold-standard Met cast includes the “phenomenal” Rene Pape as Mephistopheles and the “ideally-suited” Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite. Star conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin draws an “elegant, darkly textured performance” from the Metropolitan Opera orchestra.

Angela Gheorghiu stars as Marguerite alongside a divine cast of operatic superstars, including Roberto Alagna, Bryn Terfel, Simon Keenlyside and Sophie Koch, in David McVicar's spectacular 2004 production of Gounod's best known opera, Faust, for the Royal Opera House in London. This production was the Royal Opera Company's first performance of Gounod's Faust in 18 years. Gounod's Faust is the story of a scholar who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for unlimited knowledge and worldly indulgences. McVicar's innovative production sets this story around the time of the Franco-Prussian War (1870) in the gothic, seamy underbelly of Paris. He characterizes Faust, performed by Roberto Alagna, as a man both torn between the theater and religion, and grappling with his own sexuality.

The international success of Faust after its premiere in 1859 completely overshadowed all of Gounod’s subsequent operas. He had known Goethe’s masterpiece for two decades and brought to the text his gifts for memorable melody and rich orchestration. Added to this, the plot of Faust’s ageing and the heroine Marguerite’s redemption, offered the opportunity for the most spectacular stage effects. Heard here in its 1864 London version with an additional air and without spoken dialogue or ballet, Faust represents 19th-century French opera at its peak.

Complete collection of Caruso's performance. the original recording untouched by digital reprocessing makes it even more attractive to me. it makes a great contrast to modern recordings of the contemporary tenors. the modern recording sound so artificial and computer enhanced in comparison - one might as week call them computer generated arias.

I can´t believe this recording isn´t in the catalogue anymore ,Montserrat Caballé , Giacomo Aragall and Paul Plishka , et al are fantastic . Anyone who owns this recording surely understands my enthusiasm about it .

Fortunately, this particular Faust , given live in Philadelphia in 1985, has both strong soloists and an idiomatic conductor. It´s one of the best live recordings I´ve heard of the opera, and if the stage production matched the audible level of intensity, it must have been a thrilling theatrical event, as well.Alain Vanzo was 57 at the time of this performance. He was the premier French lyric tenor of his generation, and probably had no match for tone or phrasing in this repertoire. -Arkiv Music-

"The most dramatic piece that Berlioz ever wrote," is how conductor John Nelson describes La Damnation de Faust. The composer designated this thrilling hybrid of oratorio and opera a 'légende dramatique'. Following in the triumphant footsteps of Les Troyens, also recorded at the Auditorium Erasme in Strasbourg, this performance reunites Nelson and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg with singers Michael Spyres, Joyce DiDonato and Nicolas Courjal.