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Mariinsky Theatre

Tenor

Mikhaïl Vekua

Faust

Soprano

Ekaterina Goncharova

Marguerite

Bass (+4)

Mikhail Petrenko

Mephistopheles

Baritone (+1)

Vladislav Kupriyanov

Valentine

Contralto (+2)

Ekaterina Krapivina

Siebel

Mezzo-soprano (+3)

Elena Vitman

Martha Schwertlein

Conductor

Christian Knapp

Stage director

Stage director (+2)

Isabella Bywater

Set designer

Costume designer

Niki Shaw

Lighting designer

Jennifer Schriever

Video

Video (+1)

Nina Dunn

Ian William Galloway

Salvador Avila

Choreographer

Dmitry Pimonov

Den O'Neil

Chorusmaster

Chorusmaster (+3)

Konstantin Rylov

Language Coach

Teacher (+3)

Ksenia Klimenko

Conductor (+6)

Valery Gergiev

Bass (+6)

Nikolai Kamensky

Wagner

Orchestra

Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra

"What is your attitude towards religion?" the naive Gretchen asks the learned Faust in Goethe's tragedy. Librettists Jules Barbier and Michel Carré did not transfer this famous question into the text of the opera, but for the composer, religious issues remained one of the main ones. Charles Gounod was not just an ordinary parishioner - he worked as a church musician for several years and even intended to become a priest. The stunning organ music and chorales in the opera "Faust" were written by a former church organist and choirmaster, for whom God and the devil are by no means abstractions. Staging "Faust" at the Mariinsky Theatre, British artist and director Isabella Bywater recalled her own religious experience; she was "interested in watching a believer who commits acts that are not pleasing to God." As a representative of the liberal 21st century, Bywater does not consider the horned and tailed creatures to be separate entities: in her production, Mephistopheles, like the jack-in-the-box, is “born” straight from Faust’s bed and merged with him into an indivisible tandem. It is not the “father of lies,” but man who commits evil and must answer for it. Monsters swarm in the dark depths of the human soul (embodied on stage by the silent figures of helpful demons), and each person must curb them themselves.
The tragic love story of Faust and Margarita in the Mariinsky production is transferred to the beginning of the 20th century, but the director makes it clear that it is one of those that is repeated again and again. The heroes wander among tombstones on which their own names and dates, belonging to different centuries, are read. In the context of modern morality, when the old concepts of honor and dishonor, guilt and innocence have been largely rethought, Bywater shows the sinfulness of Faust, comparing him with Nabokov's Humbert, and Marguerite with Lolita. The heroine of the opera is fourteen, her seducer is an old man who has only returned her physical youth. For Faust, his beloved is also at first just a "nymphet" Gretchen, one of many schoolgirls with a schoolbag, a flower that he irresistibly wants to pick. Once picked, this flower turns out to be of no use to any man: neither a lover, nor a brother. To more clearly express this idea, Bywater made the only male hero sympathetic to Marguerite - Siebel - a girl.
The Gothic severity of the stage solution does not prevent "Faust" from being a luxurious romantic performance - thanks to Gounod. The simpler the gestures on stage, the more expressive the orchestra sounds, conveying the full range of the characters' feelings: from tenderness to frenzy, from despair to ecstasy. The opera is filled with magnificent melodies, many of which have become hits of concert programs: Mephistopheles' couplets about the golden calf, Margarita's ballad about the Fula king, Faust's aria "Greetings to you, innocent shelter", the soldiers' march, the waltz... Margarita's tragic death in the finale is experienced not as a triumph of death, but as a triumph of love. Margarita is saved because she loved, and ascends to God as to love. The music speaks about this most convincingly. Khristina Batyushina

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