San Francisco Classical Voice

The production, directed by Thomas Langhoff and designed by Jürgen Rose, met the "opera or not an opera" question head-on, forming from it a most brilliant conceit. Instead of trying to re-costume the entire chorus — here as in an oratorio, a key component of the dramatic movement — to appear "onstage" for its many different roles, Langhoff and Rose seat the chorus facing the audience framing a cramped, receding stage, below and in tiers up the sides. In evening dress, they look every bit the audience, and they obviously enjoyed the various bits of business they were given as the "took in" the show.

At first they merely reacted, but later they were more and more often swept into the onstage moment. Smaller groups would sometimes leave their "seats" to join in the action; the sonic contrast of on-stage and fore-stage "choruses" would have delighted Berlioz, while enabling the production to play with the opera-oratorio divide in countless engaging ways.

The musical imagery so replete in Berlioz's "Dramatic Legend" seems always to call forth pictures in the mind's eye, as if the composer were conjuring an inner movie in the imagination of his listener. Thus the frequent dramaturgical reference to film in this production, intended I think to evoke Faust's own, rather arty, inner cinema — constantly engages and challenges the listener/viewer's own response to the music, in a way which could have been incredibly annoying (one word: "Alcina") but was here fascinating.

There were some awkwardnesses; as Mephistopheles first spirits Faust away, for example, to the sound of cascading violin scales so evocative of supernatural flight, the two men can only stand to the side, "trapped" on the claustrophobic set (it's Faust's mind! Get it?), as if waiting for the transitional passage of music to be over. And then there were the countless visual euro-touches to which all San Francisco Opera-goers have become inured, such as the Hungarian March of bare-chested soldiers with M16s ("Les Rambeaux," one could say), the strobe-lit silent-movie flight into Hell, and the by-now iconic trenchcoat and fedora for Faust (one hopes, in these tough times, that the Opera saved money by buying these in such quantity this year).

And, oh yes, the orgies. Berlioz's sylphs and will-o'-the-wisps are here an extremely, ahem, corporeal presence, a veritable corps de bondage, enacting a sexual choreography as lurid as it is listless. Conjured up by Mephistopheles for the dream-sequences of Faust and Marguerite, the utter joylessness of all this activity was surely deliberate, even moralistic, but it had all the visual allure of a particularly unwieldy game of Twister played half-heartedly by people in improbably tattered scuba gear. In the early Tavern scene, the brief cavorting of nuns and clergy sporting certain prosthetic enhancements (at least one buttock seemed in urgent need of re-inflation) seemed almost quaint in its old-fashioned, burlesque, heterosexual attitude.

Such is the beauty of the dramaturgical Konzept that even these misses can be hits. For, you see, they are not a production's false moves; it's just that Faust is one rather depraved and out-of-touch fellow — that's why he's damned, in this version, after all — and this is what you are seeing. And hearing, for that matter; David Kuebler sang the demanding role of Faust with considerable lyricism, but his voice seemed ill-suited to the size of the hall and to his often problematic placement above and behind the chorus. (One thing to say about a concert version: at least he would get to be in front of the orchestra.) As a result he seemed often to strain, yet his voice sounded detached from the musical fabric. His bitter world-weariness in the opening scene seemed to be coming from another room; as with the roughness in his tone despite the unmistakably ardent passion in his wooing of Marguerite, perhaps this was carrying dramaturgy farther than necessary.

By contrast, the Mephistopheles of Kristinn Sigmundsson, here making his local debut, was thrillingly, vibrantly present. A giant of a man, clad in a tux-like garment of the utmost cheesiness, his sumptuous bass voice and amazingly nimble stage presence swept all before them. The agility of his performance was remarkable, both in his alternately ingratiating and malevolent tone and in his sometimes gleeful romping around the stage.

The character of Marguerite seems almost above the opera-versus-oratorio fray, defined as it is so completely by its gorgeous music. Mezzo-soprano Angela Denoke sang the role, and especially its two great set pieces, "Le Roi de Thulé" and "D'amour, l'ardente flamme," with an irresistibly turbulent combination of grace and passion. If only the show-stopping "D'amour" had not followed so closely after the end of the physically kinetic previous scene; it seemed for the first few moments that Denoke was still out of breath from her flight from a pursuing crowd, which ought to have taken place at some remove.

The members of the Opera Chorus, in their particularly prominent role, showed themselves once again as artists of extraordinary versatility, in the face of yet more perplexing costuming (just what were those peculiar eye coverings they all had to wear, along with the children's chorus in its First-Communion finery, in the final scene?). Their security and verve even in small semi-choruses was outstanding. In the Tavern scene, Gregory Stapp sang the Brander's "Song of the Rat" in broad style, suggesting a very large rodent indeed.

Berlioz, of course, leaves a lot of the work of the drama to the orchestra, and no staging could take that away. To the production's great credit, the stage business did not offer undue competition, but the Opera Orchestra's spirited and colorful playing under Runnicles' sure direction drew the listener in all evening long. There is a particular musical gesture in Berlioz, familiar from the Symphonie Fantastique, in which cellos and basses evoke importunate passion; here it was almost unseemly — almost. Of many other fine turns that could be mentioned were some especially assured and satanic passages from the trombones, and the beguiling solo playing of Carla Maria Rodrigues (viola) and Janet Popesco Archibald (english horn) in the accompaniments to Marguerite's two great arias.

The production, originally from the Munich State Opera, continues its run on June 17, 20, 26, 29, and July 3 at the War Memorial Opera House.