Busoni: Doktor Faust

Of all the Faust operas I have yet seen, this became my favorite on first viewing. It is not as tuneful as Gounod's, nor as grand as Boito's; but it is easily the most thoughtful and thought-provoking. The ending may leave us unsure whether Faust is "damned" or "saved," but by now it no longer seems to matter, so seriously has our appreciation been unsettled as to what, exactly, those two terms mean, anyway. So impressed was I with the opera that I did what I rather rarely do, and watched the "extras" -- interviews with Thomas Hampson and Philippe Jordan. From Jordan's segment I learned that finding the right end for this opera defeated Busoni, and two endings have been provided by other hands. Jordan chose the one used for the work's premiere in 1925. On my own, I would not have been aware of any discontinuity. Being quite tone-deaf (in the popular if not the strictly "clinical" sense of the term), I can't pick up on things like discords and tonalities. Which could be one reason I absolutely hate WOZZECK. I have disks of two other modern operas mentioned in the interviews -- LADY MACBETH OF MTSENK and PETER GRIMES -- and have nothing in particular against them but rarely feel in the mood to watch them again. Busoni's DOKTOR FAUST, however, I admired and loved right away, and cannot say why, especially considering that it uses a type of staging which usually turns me off. But it poses so many questions of philosophical importance -- and leaves the audience to ponder the answers. I suppose the music must add a dramatic dimension which affects me subliminally. The level of dramatic performance had wonderful effects of which I was conscious. I'd never heard of Busoni before this past month. Now, I'm ready to agree with Philippe Jordan that this is one of the most important operas of the twentieth century. I'm very glad indeed I bought it. And I plan to keep an eye out for other performances by Thomas Hampson.

Although the libretto of this opera is not based on Goethe's Faust, it has similar profound psychological tones. In short, Faust makes a pact with the Devil to give him powers to obtain whatever he wants, and still he feels empty. He tries love, stealing the Duchess on her wedding day; and fame as a professor, but still the same isolation persists. Only at the end he does something that fulfills him, he gives his life for the life of his son (the eternal perpetuation of life). I am a little bet disappointed that this life given scene is not stressed enough in this production. Otherwise the production is very well done. The music is difficult to perform and has as many styles as one can think, may be stressing the many facets of the mind, although it is always within a dark atmosphere. The staging is appropriately dark with the exception of the first scene, may be the only one in the real world. The rest of the scenes are all dark and out of reality, only portraying Faust's dark psychology. Interestingly, Faust is a baritone and Mephistopheles is a tenor, in contrast to the general perception of the devil having a lower voice. In this opera, the lower and darker character is Faust; Mephistopheles is a steady character with obvious intentions.Thomas Hampson is just perfect, his singing and his acting is compelling. His music and the acting takes you directly into Faust state of mind.I strongly recommend you read the booklet before watching the Opera. The interview with Hampson is also worth watching.This DVD is recommended for those seeking more than just entertainment.

Well, I was floored! What an amazing performance in all senses of the word! Simply awesome. I will not repeat the praises other reviewershave heaped on it. For some reason, it reminded me of The Ghosts of Versailles. All I can say is Buy it pronto!

Along the years, there's been some argument in the musical press whether Busoni was a great composer or if he rather was, as Richard Strauss's own pun on himself, a first class second rate one. Well, this work, one of the most intriguing operas written during the 20th Century, is indeed a very serious argument towards establishing Busoni among the great composers. It has been slow in gaining recognition since its premiere in 1925, with all too infrequent performances, a kind of cult item that saw the stage, alongside Pfitzner's Palestrina and Hindemith's Mathis der Maler, only in solemn, festive occasions and mostly in the German-speaking orbit, the three works characterised as they are by an aura of deep philosophic content, in their different approaches dealing with the struggle of the creative artist in an hostile environment; of the three, Doktor Faust is by a notch becoming the better known, with gradually less infrequent performances during the last 15 years or so. London's first staging took place only in the 1980's and New York's the following decade, in a pioneering event at NYCO that the Met only followed in the 2000's.The Zurich performance shown in this DVD is an all-round successful, certainly not a great, one, though resting heavily on two pillars, the first being Hampson's tour-de-force portrayal of the title role and the other Jordan's work in the pit. The performing version used is the standard Jarnach (whose otherwise exemplary job in the missing bits has as much of Busoni as Alfano's for Turandot has of Puccini, that is, nothing) completion, yet in the supplementary material conductor Jordan explains in an interview why he opted to leave aside Beaumont's alternative in spite of its use of "new" original Busoni material that emerged in the 1980's. I have a few quibbles with the rather silly make-up of both the three Cracovian students as well as of the Wittenberg ones, and the production is rather unimaginative for a work so laden with the fantastic and esoteric, but those observations need not deter you from an otherwise fascinating glimpse of a remarkable work. Collectors that came to know the opera from DG's 3-LP set from the 1970's, with Fischer-Dieskau's phenomenal Faust will keep referring back to that set (it was for a time available in CD during the 1990's) for sheer enjoyment. I don't know Nagano's early 2000's Erato CD set, recorded concurrently with Chatelet performances that are rumoured to have been put onto video tape but never issued on VHS or DVD, but those younger, curious collectors with a feel for the off-the-beaten-track repertoire will do well in snatching this 2-DVD set from the racks of their favourite music shop (as I did at Barcelona's FNAC) as soon as they see it, or pre-order here at Amazon and get a feel of this fascinating, always intriguing music. That it is, in its condition of being a work left unfinished by its author, a somewhat uneven one is true, but so is also its roughly but radically different contemporary, Turandot.

Never heard of the chap before. This us a fine opera which I enjoyed very much. What a tragedy that ha died without completion .

Interprétation magnifique, décor minimaliste mais de bon goût, costumes originaux et raffinés.Pour qui ne connaît pas Busoni, la musique est un peu déroutante et l'histoire est décousue mais deux suppléments d'excellente qualité expliquent la difficulté vocale d'interprétation de cet opéra, la construction musicale et les différents aspect d'orchestration de l'oeuvre.

Découverte d'une oeuvre peu jouée mise en scène avec intelligence. Imagesparfois un peu trop sombres. Mephisto très convaincant. Faust peut-être un peu trop juvénil. Dans l'ensemble, une bonne acquisition.Claude Denys