[Met Tour] CID:165950



Faust
Opera House, Chicago, Illinois, Thu, May 20, 1954




Faust (517)
Charles Gounod | Jules Barbier/Michel Carré
Faust
Richard Tucker

Marguerite
Nadine Conner

Méphistophélès
Jerome Hines

Valentin
Robert Merrill

Siebel
Margaret Roggero

Marthe
Thelma Votipka

Wagner
Lawrence Davidson


Conductor
Kurt Adler







Review 1:

Claudia Cassidy in the Chicago Tribune
Metropolitan’s Experiment Neither Fish, Fowl, nor ‘Faust’

As “Faust” is irresistible, people tinker with it, and as it is indestructible, it survives. Not always on the stage tho. Last night in the Civic Opera House the Metropolitan Opera’s new version was neither fish nor fowl, but at least a good red herring to divert those who know little about opera and care less, but now and then get trapped into buying tickets for a good, nonoperatic cause. Pursuing this premise to its most cynical conclusion, you might decide that the lean and fairly sardonic Rudolf Bing was the Mephistophelean character on the premises.


Of course, when the Metropolitan launched its own season with the new ‘Faust,” it had a far better cast, and Pierre Monteux was in the pit. Still, it is hard to imagine any combination triumphing over the blasted hearth décor Rolf Gerard dreamed up, or the wooden staging of the usually gifted Peter Brook, who first of all flung the 16th century opera into the 19th century where it doesn’t fit. “Faust” in its highest estate, is opera in the grand manner, full of mysteries, fire and brimstone, ecstatic music, signs and portents, a certain innate nobility, and a Gallic elegance of style. Pitch all these things in the junk heap, and you have to come up with something brilliant – or just don’t give “Faust.”


Mr. Brook, who staged London’s “The Little Hut” with a kind of indolent magic, here achieves the indolence without the magic. The opera dies in the kind of non-acting where Richard Tucker plays Richard Tucker in hideous unbecoming frock coats, Nadine Conner plays Nadine Conner, Robert Merrill plays Robert Merrill, and Jerome Hines plays what an eagle-eyed friend called Mephiste the Rail Splitter, which comes pretty close.


Most of them sang well – let’s clear that up. Miss Conner has neither the voice nor the style for Marguerite, but the gentlemen are singers of quality, tho in some acoustical oddity none of them had his usual edge of style. There was a coarseness about the general tone, almost as if the amplifiers were on, which there probably were not.


But had the singers been Nilsson, De Reszke, and Plancon in their prime, the production would have downed their noblest efforts. Not only are the settings hideous, but careless lighting ruined the gauze effects, turning groined stone into cheesecloth, and a shadow on the wall of Faust’s preposterous study gave you a perfect view of his costume change. And when he made that change the costume was so ridiculous that he should have known Mephistopheles was not to be trusted.


Well, settings can be expensive blunders and eventually you write them off. But staging can do an opera more lasting damage. Mr. Brook has made “Faust” duller than its and his admirers find possible to contemplate. It was scarcely his fault, to be sure, that Cesare Siepi’s illness gave him a Mephistopheles absurdly taller than his woeful Faust. But it was strictly his fault that the Kermesse moved to Montmartre, and that the crowd so cringed before the “Calf of Gold” the whole point of the sword scene was lost. It was amusing, tho, to have the ballet enter in motley from a side show. It made me sorry to miss the Walpurgis Night, which is most fiendish about deadlines.



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