Opera Books
A
BOOK OF OPERAS
THEIR
HISTORIES, THEIR PLOTS
AND THEIR MUSIC
BY
HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL
CHAPTER VI
“FAUST”
MM.
Michel Carré and Jules Barbier, who made the book for Gounod’s opera
“Faust,” went for their subject to Goethe’s dramatic poem. Out of that
great work, which had occupied the mind of the German poet for an
ordinary lifetime, the French librettists extracted the romance which
sufficed them — the story of Gretchen’s love for the rejuvenated
philosopher, her seduction and death. This romance is wholly the
creation of Goethe; it has no place in any of the old legends which are
at the bottom of the history of Dr. Faust, or Faustus. Those legends
deal with the doings of a magician who has sold his soul to the devil
for the accomplishment of some end on which his ambition is set. There
are many such legends in mediaeval literature, and their fundamental
thought is older than Christianity. In a sense, the idea is a product of
ignorance and superstition combined. In all ages men whose learning and
achievements were beyond the comprehension of simple folk were thought
to have derived their powers from the practice of necromancy. The list
is a long one, and includes some of the great names of antiquity. The
imagination of the Middle Ages made bondsmen of the infernal powers out
of such men as Zoroaster, Democritus, Empedocles, Apollonius, Virgil,
Albertus Magnus, Merlin, and Paracelsus. In the sixth century Theophilus
of Syracuse was said to have sold himself to the devil and to have been
saved from damnation only by the miraculous intervention of the Virgin
Mary, who visited hell and bore away the damnable compact. So far as his
bond was concerned, Theophilus was said to have had eight successors
among the Popes of Rome.
Architects of cathedrals and engineers of bridges were wont, if we
believe popular tales, to barter their souls in order to realize their
great conceptions. How do such notions get into the minds of the people?
I attempted not an answer but an explanation in a preface to Gounod’s
opera published by Schirmer some years ago, which is serving me a good
turn now. For the incomprehensible the Supernatural is the only
accounting. These things are products of man’s myth-making capacity and
desire. With the advancement of knowledge this capacity and desire
become atrophied, but spring into life again in the presence of a
popular stimulant. The superstitious peasantry of Bavaria be-held a man
in league with the devil in the engineer who ran the first locomotive
engine through that country, More recently, I am told, the same people
conceived the notion that the Prussian needle-gun, which had wrought
destruction among their soldiery a the war of 1866, was an infernal
machine for which Bismarck had given the immortal part of himself.
When printing was invented, it was looked upon in a double sense as
a black art, and it was long and widely believed that Johann Fust, or
Faust, of Mayence, the partner of Gutenberg, was the original Dr. Johann
Faustus (the prototype of Goethe’s Faust), who practised magic
toward the end of the fifteenth and at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, made a compact with Mephistopheles, performed many miraculous
feats, and died horribly at the last. But Fust, or Faust, was a rich and
reputable merchant of Mayence who provided capital to promote the art of
Gutenberg and Schöffer, and Mr. H. Sutherland Edwards, who gossips
pleasantly and at great length about the Faust legends’ in Volume I of
his book, “The Lyrical Drama,” indulges a rather wild fancy when he
considers it probable that he was the father of the real mediaeval in
carnation of the ancient superstition. The real Faust had been a poor
lad, but money inherited from a rich uncle enabled him to attend
lectures at the University of Cracow, where he seems to have devoted
himself with particular assiduity to the study of magic, which had at
that period a respectable place in the curriculum. Having obtained his
doctorial hat, he travelled through Europe practising necromancy and
acquiring a thoroughly bad reputation. To the fact that this man
actually lived, and lived such a life as has been described, we have the
testimony of a physician, Philip Begardi; a theologian, Johann Gast, and
no less a witness than Philip Melanchthon, the reformer. Martin Luther
refers to Faust in his “Table Talk” as a man lost beyond all hope of
redemption; Melanchthon, who says that he talked with him, adds : “This
sorcerer Faust, an abominable beast, a common sewer of many devils
(turpissima bestia et cloaca multorum diabolorum), boasted that he
had enabled the imperial armies to win their victories in Italy.”
The literary history of Faust is much too long to be even outlined
here; a few points must suffice us. In a book published in Frankfort in
1587 by a German writer named Spiess, the legend received its first
printed form. An English ballad on the subject appeared within a year.
In 1590 there came a translation, of the entire story, which was the j
source from which Marlowe drew his “Tragical History of the Life and
Death of Dr. Faustus,” brought forward on the stage in 1593 and printed
in 1604. New versions of the legend followed each other rapidly, and
Faust became a favorite character with playwrights, romancers, and
poets. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, when Goethe conceived
the idea of utilizing the subject for publishing his comprehensive
philosophy of human life, it seems to have held possession of a large
portion of literary Germany. All together, it was in the mind of the
great poet from his adolescence till his death; but while he was working
on his original plan, literary versions of the legend were published by
twenty-eight German authors, including Lessing, whose manuscript,
unhappily, was lost. Goethe had known the legend from childhood, when he
had seen puppet-plays based on it — these plays being the vulgar progeny
of Marlowe’s powerful tragedy, which is still an ornament of English
literature. Music was a part of these puppet-plays. In the first one
that fell into my hands I find the influence of opera manifest in
recitatives and airs put into the mouth of Mephistopheles, and
comic songs sung by Kasperle, the Punch of the German
marionette fraternity.
The love tale which furnished forth the entire opera book of MM.
Carré and Barbier is, as I have said, wholly the invention of Goethe.
There is the shadowy form of a maiden in some of the versions of the
legend, but not a hint of the romantic sentiment so powerfully and
pathetically set forth by the poet. Nor did the passion either for good
or evil play a part in the agreement between Faust and the devil. That
agreement covered five points only: Faust pledged himself to deny God,
hate the human race, despise the clergy, never set foot in a church, and
never get married. So far from being a love episode in the story, when
Faustus, in the old book by Spiess, once expressed a wish to abrogate
the last condition, Mephistopheles refused him permission on the ground
that marriage is something pleasing to God, and for that reason in
contravention of the contract. “Hast thou,” quoth Mephistopheles,
“sworn thyself an enemy to God and to all creatures? To this I answer
thee, thou canst not marry; thou canst not serve two masters, God and
thy prince. For wedlock is a chief institution ordained of God, and that
thou hast promised to defy as we do all, and that thou hast not only
done, but, moreover, thou hast confirmed it with thy blood. Persuade
thyself that what thou hast done in contempt of wedlock, it is all to
thine own delight. Therefore, Faustus, look well about thee and bethink
thyself better, and I wish thee to change thy mind, for if thou keep not
what thou hast promised in thy writing, we will tear thee in pieces,
like the dust under thy feet. Therefore, sweet Faustus, think with what
unquiet life, anger, strife, and debate thou shalt live in when thou
takest a wife. Therefore, change thy mind.” Faustus abandons his purpose
for the time being, but within two hours summons his spirit again and
demands his consent to marriage; whereupon up there comes a whirlwind,
which fills the house with fire and smoke and hurls Faustus about until
he is unable to stir hand or foot. Also there appears an ugly devil, so
dreadful and monstrous to behold that Faustus dares not look upon him.
This devil is in a mood for jesting. “How likest thou thy wedding?” he
asks of Faustus, who promises not to mention marriage more, and is well
content when Mephistopheles engages to bring him any woman, dead or
alive, whom he may desire to possess. It is in obedience to this promise
that Helen of Troy is brought back from the world of shades to be
Faustus’s paramour. By her he has a son, whom he calls Justus Faustus,
but in the end, when Faustus loses his life, mother and child vanish.
Goethe uses the scene of the amour between Faust and the ancient beauty
in the second part of his poem as does Boito in his “Mefistofele,”
charging it with the beautiful symbolism which was in the German poet’s
mind. In the Polish tale of Pan Twardowsky, built on the lines of the
old legend, there is a more amusing fling at marriage. In return for the
help which he is to receive, the Polish wizard has the privilege of
demanding three duties of the devil. After enjoying to the full the
benefits conferred by two, he commands the devil to marry Mine.
Twardowska. This is more than the devil had bargained for, or is willing
to perform. He refuses; the contract is broken, and Twardowsky is saved.
The story may have inspired Thackeray’s amusing tale in “The Paris
Sketch-book,” entitled “The Painter’s Bargain.”
For the facts in the story of the composition and production of
Gounod’s opera, we have the authority of the composer in his
autobiography. In 1856 he made the acquaintance of Jules Barbier and
Michel Carré, and asked them to collaborate with him in an opera. They
assenting, he proposed Goethe’s “Faust” as a subject, and it met with
their approval. Together they went to see M. Carvalho, who was then
director of the Théâtre Lyrique. He, too, liked the idea of the opera,
and the librettists went to work. The composer had written nearly half
of the score, when M. Carvaiho brought the disconcerting intelligence
that a grand melodrama treating the subject was in preparation at the
Thé-âtre de la Porte Saint-Martin. Carvalho said that it would be
impossible to get the opera ready before the appearance of the
melodrama, and unwise to enter into competition with a theatre the
luxury of whose stage mounting would have attracted all Paris before the
opera could be produced. Carvalho therefore advised a change of subject,
which was such a blow to Gounod that he was incapable of applying
himself to work for a week. Finally, Carvalho came to the rescue with a
request for a lyric comedy based on one of Molière’s plays. Gounod chose
“Le Médecin malgré lui,” and the opera had its production at the Théâtre
Lyrique on the anniversary of Molière’s birth, January 15, 1858. The
melodrama at the Porte Saint-Martin turned out to be a failure in spite
of its beautiful pictures, and Carvalho recurred to the opera, which had
been laid aside, and Gounod had it ready by July. He read it to the
director in the greenroom of the theatre in that month, and Mine.
Carvalho, wife of the director, who was present, was so deeply impressed
with the rôle of Marguerite that M. Carvalho asked the composer’s
permission to assign it to her. “This was agreed upon,” says Gounod,
“and the future proved the choice to be a veritable inspiration.”
Rehearsals began in September, 1858, and soon developed
difficulties. Gounod had set his heart upon a handsome young tenor named
Guardi for the titular rôle, but he was found to be unequal to its
demands. This caused such embarrassment that, it is said, Gounod, who
had a pretty voice and was rather fond of showing it, seriously pondered
the feasibility of singing it himself. He does not tell us this in his
autobiography, but neither does he tell us that he had chosen Mine.
Ugalde for the part of Marguerite, and that he yielded to M.
Carvaiho in giving it to the director’s wife because Mme. Ugalde had
quarrelled with him (as prima donnas will), about Massé’s opera, “La Fée
Carabosse,” which preceded “Faust” at the Lyrique. The difficulty about
the tenor rôle was overcome by the enlistment of M. Barbot, an artist
who had been a companion of Carvalho’s when he sang small parts at the
Opéra Comique. He was now far past his prime, and a pensioned teacher at
the Conservatoire, but Gounod bears witness that he “showed himself a
great musician in the part of Faust.” Of Belanqué, who created
the part of Méphistophélès, Gounod says that “he was an
intelligent comedian whose play, physique, and voice lent themselves
wonderfully to this fantastic and Satanic personage.” As for Mine.
Carvalho, it was the opinion of the composer that, though her masterly
qualities of execution and style had already placed her in the front
rank of contemporary singers, no rôle, till Marguerite fell to
her lot, had afforded her opportunity to show in such measure “the
superior phases of her talent, so sure, so refined, so steady, so
tranquil — its lyric and pathetic qualities.”
It was a distinguished audience that listened to the first
performance of “Faust” on March 19, 1859. Auber, Berlioz, Reyer, Jules
Janin, Perrin, Émile Ollivier, and many other men who had made their
mark in literature, art, or politics sat in the boxes, and full as many
more of equal distinction in the stalls. Among these latter were
Delacroix, Vernet, Eugène Giraud, Pasdeloup, Scudo, Heugel, and Jules
Lévy. The criticism of the journals which followed was, as usual, a
blending of censure and praise. Berlioz was favorably inclined toward
the work, and, with real discrimination, put his finger on the monologue
at the close of the third act (“Il m’aime! Quel trouble en mon cœur”) as
the best thing in the score. Scudo gave expression to what was long the
burden of the critical song in Germany; namely, the failure of the
authors to grasp the large conception of Goethe’s poem; but, with true
Gallic inconsistency, he set down the soldiers’ chorus as a masterpiece.
The garden scene, with its sublimated mood, its ecstasy of feeling, does
not seem to have moved him; he thought the third act monotonous and too
long. There was no demand for the score on the part of the French
publishers, but at length Choudens was persuaded to adventure 10,000
francs, one-half of an inheritance, in it. He was at that time an
éditeur on a small scale, as well as a postal official, and the
venture put him on the road to fortune. For the English rights Gounod is
said to have received only forty pounds sterling, and this only after
the energetic championship of Chorley, who made the English translation.
The opera was given thirty-seven times at the Théâtre Lyrique. Ten years
after its first performance it was revised to fit the schemes of the
Grand Opéra, and brought forward under the new auspices on March 3,
1869. Mlle. Christine Nilsson was the new Marguerite. No opera
has since equalled the popularity of “Faust” in Paris. Twenty-eight
years after its first performance, Gounod was privileged to join his
friends in a celebration of its 500th representation. That was in 1887.
Eight years after, the 1000 mark was reached, and the 1250th Parisian
representation took place in 1902.
Two years before “Faust” reached London, it was given in Germany,
where it still enjoys great popularity, though it is called
“Margarethe,” in deference to the manes of Goethe. Within a few
weeks in 1863 the opera had possession of two rival establishments in
London. At Her Majesty’s Theatre it was given for the first time on June
11, and at the Royal Italian Opera on July 2. On January 23, 1864, it
was brought forward in Mr. Chorley’s English version at Her Majesty’s.
The first American representation took place at the Academy of Music,
New York, on November 25, 1863, the parts being distributed as follows :
Margherita, Miss Clara Louise Kellogg; Siebel, Miss
Henrietta Sulzer; Martha, Miss Fanny Stockton; Faust,
Francesco Mazzoleni; Mephistopheles, Hanibal Biachi;
Valentine, G. Yppolito ; Wagner, D. Coletti. It was sung in
Italian, won immediate popularity, and made money for Max Maretzek, who
was at once the manager and the conductor of the company. Forty years
before an English version of Goethe’s tragedy (the first part, of
course) had been produced at the Bowery Theatre, with the younger
Wallack as Faust and Charles Hill as Mephistopheles.
The opera begins, like Goethe’s dramatic poem, after the prologue,
with the scene in Faust’s study. The aged philosopher has grown
weary of fruitless inquiry into the mystery of nature and its Creator,
and longs for death. He has just passed a night in study, and as the
morning breaks he salutes it as his last on earth and pledges it in a
cup of poison. As he is about to put the cup to his lips, the song of a
company of maidens floats in at the window. It tells of the joy of
living and loving and the beauty of nature and its inspirations.
Faust’s hand trembles, strangely, unaccountably ; again he lifts the
cup, but only to pause again to listen to a song sung by a company of
reapers repairing to the fields, chanting their gratitude to God for the
loveliness surrounding them, and invoking His blessing. The sounds
madden the despairing philosopher. What would prayer avail him? Would it
bring back youth and love and faith? No. Accursed, therefore, be all
things good — earth’s pleasures, riches, allurements of every sort;’ the
dreams of love ; the wild joy of combat ; happiness itself ; science,
religion, prayers, belief ; above all, a curse upon the patience with
which he had so long endured! He summons Satan to his aid.
Méphistophélès answers the call, in the garb of a cavalier. His tone
and bearing irritate Faust, who bids him begone. The fiend would
know his will, his desires. Gold, glory, power? — all shall be his for
the asking. But these things are not the heart’s desire of Faust.
He craves youthfulness, with its desires and delights, its passions and
puissance. Méphistophélès promises all, and, when he hesitates,
inflames his ardor with a vision of the lovely Marguerite seated
at her spinning-wheel. Eagerly Faust signs the compact — the
devil will serve Faust here, but below the relations shall be
reversed. Faust drinks a pledge to the vision, which fades away.
In a twinkling the life-weary sage is transformed into a young man, full
of eager and impatient strength.
Méphistophélès loses no time in launching Faust upon
his career of adventures. First, he leads him to a fair in a mediaeval
town. Students are there who sing the pleasures of drinking ; soldiers,
too, bent on conquest — of maidens or fortresses, all’s one to them ;
old burghers, who find delight in creature comforts ; maids and matrons,
flirtatious and envious. All join in the merriest of musical hubbubs.
Valentin, a soldier who is about to go to the wars, commends his
sister Marguerite to the care of Siebel, a gentle youth
who loves her. Wagner, a student, begins a song, but is
interrupted by Méphistophélès, who has entered the circle of
merry-makers with Faust, and who now volunteers to sing a better
song than the one just begun. He sings of the Calf of Gold (“Le veau
d’or est toujours debout”), and the crowd delightedly shouts the
refrain. The singer accepts a cup of wine, but, finding it not at all to
his taste, he causes vintages to the taste of every one to flow from the
cask which serves as a tavern sign. He offers the company a toast, “To
Marguerite!” and when Valentin attempts to resent the
insult to his sister with his sword, it breaks in his hand as he tries
to penetrate a magic circle which Méphistophélès draws around
himself. The men now suspect the true character of their singular
visitor, and turn the cruciform hilts of their swords against him, to
his intense discomfort. With the return of the women the merrymaking is
resumed. All join in a dance, tripping it gayly to one waltz sung by the
spectators and another which rises simultaneously from the instruments.
Marguerite crosses the market-place on her way home from church.
Faust offers her his arm, but she declines his escort — not quite
so rudely as Goethe’s Gretchen does in the corresponding
situation. Faust becomes more than ever enamoured of the maiden,
whom he had seen in the vision conjured up in the philosopher’s study.
Méphistophélès is a bit amused at Faust’s first
attempt at wooing, and undertakes to point the way for him. He leads him
into the garden surrounding the cottage in which Marguerite
dwells. Siebel had just been there and had plucked a nosegay for
the maiden of his heart, first dipping his fingers in holy water, to
protect them from the curse which Méphistophélès had pronounced
against them while parading as a fortune-teller at the fair. Faust
is lost in admiration at sight of the humble abode of loveliness and
innocence, and lauds it in a romance (“Salut! demeure chaste et pure”),
but is taken aside by Méphistophélès, who gives warning of the
approach of Marguerite, and places a casket of jewels beside the
modest bouquet left by Siebel. Marguerite, seated at her
spinning-wheel, alternately sings a stanza of a ballad (“Il était un Roi
de Thule”) and speaks her amazed curiosity concerning the handsome
stranger who had addressed her in the marketplace. She finds the jewels,
ornaments herself with them, carolling her delight the while, and
admiring the regal appearance which the gems lend her.
Here I should like to be pardoned a brief digression. Years ago,
while the German critics were resenting the spoliation of the
masterpiece of their greatest poet by the French librettists, they fell
upon this so-called Jewel Song (“Air des bijoux,” the French call it),
and condemned its brilliant and ingratiating waltz measures as being out
of keeping with the character of Gretchen. In this they forgot
that Marguerite and Gretchen are very different characters
indeed. There is much of the tender grace of the unfortunate German
maiden in the creation of the French authors, but none of her simple,
almost rude, rusticity. As created by, let me say, Mine. Carvalho and
perpetuated by Christine Nilsson and the painter Ary Scheffer,
Marguerite is a good deal of a grande dame, and against the
German critics it might appositely be pleaded that there are more traces
of childish ingenuousness in her rejoicing over the casket of jewels
than in any of her other utterances. The episode is poetically
justified, of course, by the eighth scene of Goethe’s drama, and there
was not wanting one German writer who boldly came to the defence of
Marguerite on the ground that she moved on a higher moral plane than
Gretchen. The French librettists, while they emptied the
character of much of its poetical contents, nevertheless made it in a
sense more gentle, and Gounod refined it still more by breathing an
ecstasy into all of its music. Goethe’s Gretchen, though she
rejects Faust’s first advances curtly enough to be called
impolite, nevertheless ardently returns Faust’s kiss on her first
meeting with him in the garden, and already at the second (presumably)
offers to leave her window open, and accepts the sleeping potion for her
mother. It is a sudden, uncontrollable rush of passion to which
Marguerite succumbs. Gretchen remains in simple amaze that
such a fine gentleman as Faust should find anything to admire in
her, even after she has received and returned his first kiss ; but
Marguerite is exalted, transfigured by the new feelings surging
within her.
Il m’aime! quel trouble en mon cœur!
L’oiseau chante! Le vent murmure!
Toutes les voix de la nature
Semblent me répéter en chœur:
Il t’aime!
I resume the story. Martha, the neighborhood gossip, comes
to encourage Marguerite in a belief which she scarcely dares
cherish, that the jewels had been left for her by some noble admirer,
and her innocent pleasure is interrupted by the entrance of Faust
and Méphistophélès. The latter draws Martha away, and
Faust wooes the maiden with successful ardor. They have indulged in
their first embrace, and said their farewells till to-morrow: Faust
is about to depart, when Méphistophélès detains him and
points to Marguerite, who is burdening the perfumed air with her
new ecstasy. He rushes to her, and, with a cry of delight, she falls
into his arms.
Goethe’s scene at the fountain becomes, in the hands of the French
librettists, a scene in the chamber of Marguerite. The deceived
maiden is cast down by the jeers and mockings of her erstwhile
companions, and comforted by Siebel. It is now generally omitted.
Marguerite has become the talk of the town, and evil reports
reach the ear of her brother Valentin on his return from the wars
with the victorious soldiery. Valentin confronts Faust and
Méphistophélès while the latter is singing a ribald serenade at
Marguerite’s door. The men fight, and, through the machinations
of Méphistophélès, Valentin is mortally wounded. He dies
denouncing the conduct of Marguerite, and cursing her for having
brought death upon him. Marguerite seeks consolation in religious
worship ; but the fiend is at her elbow even in the holy fane, and his
taunts and the accusing chant of a choir of demons interrupt her
prayers. The devil reveals himself in his proper (or improper) person at
the end, and Marguerite falls in a swoon.
The Walpurgis night scene of Goethe furnished the suggestion for
the ballet which fills the first three scenes of the fifth act, and
which was added to the opera when it was remodelled for the Grand Opéra
in 1869. The scene holds its place in Paris, but is seldom performed
elsewhere. A wild scene in the Harz Mountains gives way to an enchanted
hail in which are seen the most famous courtesans of ancient history —
Phryne, Laïs, Aspasia, Cleopatra, and Helen of Troy. The apparition of
Marguerite appears to Faust, a red line encircling her
neck, like the mark of a headsman’s axe. We reach the end. The
distraught maiden has slain her child, and now lies in prison upon her
pallet of straw, awaiting death. Faust enters and tries to
persuade her to fly with him. Her poor mind is all awry and occupies
itself only with the scenes of her first meeting and the love-making in
the garden. She turns with horror from her lover when she sees his
companion, and in an agony of supplication, which rises higher and
higher with each reiteration, she implores Heaven for pardon. She sinks
lifeless to the floor. Méphistophélès pronounces her damned, but
a voice from on high proclaims her saved. Celestial voices chant the
Easter hymn, “Christ is risen!” while a band of angels bear her soul
heavenward.
Last updated October 22, 2006