Opera Books
A
BOOK OF OPERAS
THEIR
HISTORIES, THEIR PLOTS
AND THEIR MUSIC
BY
HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL
CHAPTER VIII
“LA DAMNATION DE FAUST”
IN an
operatic form Berlioz’s “Damnation de Faust” had its first
representation in New York at the Metropolitan Opera-house on December
7, 1906. Despite its high imagination, its melodic charm, its vivid and
varied colors, its frequent flights toward ideal realms, its accents of
passion, its splendid picturesqueness, it presented itself as a “thing
of shreds and patches.” It was, indeed, conceived as such, and though
Berlioz tried by various devices to give it entity, he failed. When he
gave it to the world, he called it a “Dramatic Legend,” a term which may
mean much or little as one chooses to consider it; but I can recall no
word of his which indicates that he ever thought that it was fit for the
stage. It was Raoul Gunsbourg, director of the opera at Monte Carlo,
who, in 1903, conceived the notion of a theatrical representation of the
legend and tricked it out with pictures and a few attempts at action.
Most of these attempts are futile and work injury to the music, as will
presently appear, but in a few instances they were successful, indeed
very successful. Of course, if Berlioz had wanted to make an opera out
of Goethe’s drama, he could have done so. He would then have anticipated
Gounod and Boito and, possibly, have achieved one of those popular
successes for which he hungered. But lie was in his soul a poet, in his
heart a symphonist, and intellectually (as many futile efforts proved)
incapable of producing a piece for the boards. When the Faust subject
first seized upon his imagination, he knew it only in a prose
translation of Goethe’s poem made by Gerald de Nerval. In his “Memoirs”
he tells us how it fascinated him. He carried it about with him,
reading it incessantly and eagerly at dinner, in the streets, in
the theatre. In the prose translation there were a few fragments of
songs. These he set to music and published under the title “Huit Scènes
de Faust,” at his own expense. Marx, the Berlin critic, saw the music
and wrote the composer a letter full of encouragement. But Berlioz soon
saw grave defects in his work and withdrew it from circulation,
destroying all the copies which he could lay hands on. What was good in
it, however, he laid away for future use. The opportunity came twenty
years later, when he was fired anew with a desire to write music for
Goethe’s poem.
Though he had planned the work before starting out on his memorable
artistic travels, he seems to have found inspiration in the circumstance
that he w as amongst a people who were more appreciative of his genius
than his own countrymen, and whose language was that employed by the
poet. Not more than one-sixth of his “Eight Scenes” had consisted of
settings of the translations of M. de Nerval. A few scenes had been
prepared by M. Gaudonnière from notes provided by the composer. The rest
of the book Berlioz wrote himself, now paraphrasing the original poet,
now going to him only for a suggestion. As was the case with Wagner,
words and music frequently presented themselves to him simultaneously.
Travelling from town to town, conducting rehearsals and concerts, he
wrote whenever and wherever he could — one number in an inn at Passau,
the Elbe scene and the Dance of the Sylphs at Vienna, the peasants’ song
by gaslight in a shop one night when he had lost his way in Pesth, the
angels’ chorus in Marguerite’s apotheosis at Prague (getting up
in the middle of the night to write it down), the song of the students,
“Jam nox stellata velamina pandit” (of which the words are also
Berlioz’s), at Breslau. He finished the work in Rouen and Paris, at
home, at his café, in the gardens of the Tuilleries, even on a stone in
the Boulevard du Temple. While in Vienna he made an orchestral
transcription of the famous Rakoczy march (in one night, he says, though
this is scarcely credible, since the time would hardly suffice to write
down the notes alone). The march made an extraordinary stir at the
concert in Pesth when he produced it, and this led him to incorporate
it, with an introduction, into his Legend — a proceeding which he
justified as a piece of poetical license; he thought that he was
entitled to put his hero in any part of the world and in any situation
that he pleased.
This incident serves to indicate how lightly all dramatic fetters
sat upon Berlioz while “La Damnation”was in his mind, and how little it
occurred to him that any one would ever make the attempt to place his
scenes upon the stage. In the case of the Hungarian march, this has
been done only at the sacrifice of Berlioz’s poetical conceit to which
the introductory text and music were fitted; but of this more presently.
As Berlioz constructed the “Dramatic Legend,” it belonged to no musical
category. It was neither a symphony with vocal parts like his “Roméo et
Juliette” (which has symphonic elements in some of its sections), nor a
cantata, nor an oratorio. It is possible that this fact was long an
obstacle to its production. Even in New York where, on its introduction,
it created the profoundest sensation ever witnessed. in a local
concert-room, it was performed fourteen times with the choral parts sung
by the Oratorio Society before that organization admitted it into its
lists.
And now to tell how the work was fitted to the uses of the lyric
theatre. Nothing can be plainer to persons familiar with the work in its
original form than that no amount of ingenuity can ever give the scenes
of the “Dramatic Legend” continuity or coherency. Boito, in his opera,
was unwilling to content himself with the episode of the amour between
Faust and Marguerite; he wanted to bring out the
fundamental ethical idea of the poet, and he went so far as to attempt
the Prologue in Heaven, the Classical Sabbath, and the death of Faust
with the contest for his soul. Berlioz had no scruples of any kind.
He chose his scenes from Goethe’s poem, changed them at will, and
interpolated an incident simply to account for the Hungarian march.
Connection with each other the scenes have not, and some of the best
music belongs wholly in the realm of the ideal. At the outset Berlioz
conceived Faust alone on a vast field in Hungary in spring. He
comments on the beauties of nature and praises the benison of solitude.
His ruminations are interrupted by a dance of peasants and the passage
of an army to the music of the Rakoczy march. This scene M. Gunsbourg
changes to a picture of a mediaeval interior in which Faust
soliloquizes, and a view through the window of a castle with a
sally-port. Under the windows the peasants dance, and out of the huge
gateway come the soldiery and march off to battle. At the climax of the
music which drove the people of Pesth wild at its first performance, so
that Berlioz confessed that he himself shuddered and felt the hair
bristling on his head — when in a long crescendo fugued fragments
of the march theme keep reappearing, interrupted by drum-beats like
distant cannonading, Gunsbourg’s battalions halt, and there is a solemn
benediction of the standards. Then, to the peroration, the soldiers run,
not as if eager to get into battle, but as if in inglorious retreat.
The second scene reproduces the corresponding incident in Gounod’s
opera — Faust in his study, life-weary and despondent. He is
about to drink a cup of poison when the rear wall of the study rolls up
and discloses the interior of a church with a kneeling congregation
which chants the Easter canticle, “Christ is risen!” Here is one of the
fine choral numbers of the work for which concert, not operatic,
conditions are essential. The next scene, however, is of the opera
operatic, and from that point of view the most perfect in the work. It
discloses the revel of students, citizens, and soldiers in Auerbach’s
cellar. Brander sings the song of the rat which by good living
had developed a paunch “like Dr. Luther’s,” but died of poison laid by
the cook. The drinkers shout a boisterous refrain after each stanza, and
supplement the last with a mock-solemn “Requiescat in pace, Amen.” The
phrase suggests new merriment to Brander, who calls for a fugue
on the “Amen,” and the roisterers improvise one on the theme of the rat
song, which calls out hearty commendation from Méphistophélès,
and a reward in the shape of the song of the flea — a delightful piece
of grotesquerie with its accompaniment suggestive of the skipping of the
pestiferous little insect which is the subject of the song.
The next scene is the triumph of M. Gunsbourg, though for it he is
indebted to Miss Loie Fuller and the inventor of the aerial ballet. In
the conceit of Berlioz, Faust lies asleep on the bushy banks of
the Elbe. Méphistophélès summons gnomes and sylphs to fill his
mind with lovely fancies. They do their work so well as to entrance, not
only Faust, but all who hear their strains, The instrumental
ballet is a fairy waltz, a filmy musical fabric, seemingly woven of
moonbeams and dewy cobwebs, over a pedal-point on the muted
violoncellos, ending with drum taps and harmonics from the harp — one of
the daintiest and most original orchestral effects imaginable. So dainty
is the device, indeed, that one would think that nothing could come
between it and the ears of the transported listeners without ruining the
ethereal creation. But M. Gunsbourg’s fancy has accomplished the
miraculous. Out of the river bank he constructs a floral bower rich as
the magical garden of Klingsor. Sylphs circle around the sleeper
and throw themselves into graceful attitudes while the song is sounding.
Then to the music of the elfin waltz, others enter who have, seemingly,
cast off the gross weight which holds mortals in contact with the earth.
With robes a-flutter like wings, they dart upwards and remain suspended
in mid-air at will or float in and out of the transporting picture. To
Faust is also presented a vision of Marguerite.
The next five scenes in Berlioz’s score are connected by M.
Gunsbourg and forced to act in sequence for the sake of the stage set,
in which a picture of Marguerite’s chamber is presented in the
conventional fashion made necessary by the exigency of showing an
exterior and interior at the same time, as in the last act of “Rigoletto.”
For a reason at which I cannot even guess, M. Gunsbourg goes farther and
transforms the chamber of Marguerite into a sort of semi-enclosed
arbor, and places a lantern in her hand instead of the lamp, so that she
may enter in safety from the street. In this street there walk soldiers,
followed by students, singing their songs. Through them Faust
finds his way and into the trellised enclosure. The strains of the songs
are heard at the last blended in a single harmony. Marguerite
enters through the street with her lantern and sings the romance of the
King of Thule, which Berlioz calls a Chanson Gothique, one of the
most original of his creations and, like the song in the next scene,
“L’amour l’ardente flamme,” which takes the place of Goethe’s “Meine Ruh’
ist hin,” is steeped in a mood of mystical tenderness quite beyond
description. Méphistophétès summons will-o’-the-wisps to aid in
the bewilderment of the troubled mind of Marguerite. Here realism
sadly disturbs the scene as Berlioz asks that the fancy shall create it.
The customary dancing lights of the stage are supplemented with
electrical effects which are beautiful, if not new. They do not mar if
they do not help the grotesque minuet. But when M. Gunsbourg
materializes the ghostly flames and presents them as a mob of hopping
figures, he throws douches of cold water on the imagination of the
listeners. Later he spoils enjoyment of the music utterly by making it
the accompaniment of some utterly irrelevant pantomime by Marguerite,
who goes into the street and is seen writhing between the
conflicting emotions of love and duty, symbolized by a vision of
Faust and the glowing of a cross on the façade of a church. To learn
the meaning of this, one must go to the libretto, where he may read that
it is all a dream dreamed by Marguerite after she had fallen
asleep in her arm-chair. But we see her awake, not asleep, and it is all
foolish and disturbing stuff put in to fill time and connect two of
Berlioz’s scenes. Marguerite returns to the room which she had
left only in her dream, Faust discovers himself, and there
follows the inevitable love-duet which Méphistophétès changes
into a trio when he enters to urge Faust to depart. Meanwhile,
Marguerite’s neighbors gather in the street and warn Dame Martha
of the misdeeds of Marguerite. The next scene seems to have
been devised only to give an environment to Berlioz’s paraphrase of
Goethe’s immortal song at the spinning-wheel. From the distance is heard
the fading song of the students and the last echo of drums and trumpets
sounding the retreat. Marguerite rushes to the window, and,
overcome, rather unaccountably, with remorse and grief, falls in a
swoon.
The last scene. A mountain gorge, a rock in the foreground
surmounted by a cross. Faust’s soliloquy, “Nature, immense,
impénétrable et fière,” was inspired by Goethe’s exalted invocation to
nature. Faust signs the compact, Méphistophétès summons
the infernal steeds, Vortex and Giaour, and the ride to
hell begins. Women and children at the foot of the cross supplicate the
prayers of Mary, Magdalen, and Margaret. The cross disappears in a
fearful crash of sound, the supplicants flee, and a moving panorama
shows the visions which are supposed to meet the gaze of the riders —
birds of night, dangling skeletons, a hideous and bestial phantasmagoria
at the end of which Faust is delivered to the flames. The picture
changes, and above the roofs of the sleeping town appears a vision of
angels welcoming Marguerite.
Last updated October 22, 2006