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To the Devil With Faust

Michael Zwiebach on July 28, 2009
After the epic lavishness of Turandot, Festival Opera isn’t looking to bowl you over with its upcoming production of Gounod’s Faust. But while the physical design of Faust takes the opposite tack from Puccini’s blockbuster, the end result promises to be just as impressive.
Brian Thorsett

Festival Opera’s production, conducted and directed by Artistic Director Michael Morgan, places the opera in a world of existential illusion, a modern take on the classic myth. “Our modern setting will begin with Faust as an old man living in a retirement facility,” says Morgan. “As a backdrop, we will use projections to show the effects of time on Faust’s surroundings, beginning with the wallpaper of his room, which will gradually transform into the vivid flowers of Marguerite’s garden and then decay. This happens over the course of the entire performance. As the garden decays, a spider web becomes superimposed on the flowers, symbolizing the trap set for Faust by Méphistophélès. This will be Festival Opera’s first use of large-scale projections, as well as employing this kind of visual symbolism, to tell a story through both sound and light. It will be like the way you experience a sunrise. You don’t notice each different gradation of light, but at some point you realize the sky is bright and the sun is up.”

Kristen Clayton

The trick, in a minimal production such as this one, at Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center for the Arts, is good casting — and that’s an area in which Morgan excels. To sing the role of Faust, he got Brian Thorsett, a former Merola participant and a Baroque and Mozart specialist. “When Michael first offered me this role, I was hesitant,” says Thorsett, “but after a few emails back and forth, he really convinced me it would be a good fit and that the orchestra will be tailored to fit with all of the cast’s talents. Not many do that.”

The joke about Gounod’s Faust is that it should have been called Marguerite. The heroine’s role is enormously complicated, and Morgan has tapped Kristen Clayton, a former Adler Fellow, and now an experienced singing actress who loves this role. “It’s very special when you find opera roles that feel suited specifically to your voice,” she says. “Marguerite goes through such a range of emotions, from loneliness and vulnerability to succumbing to passion and desire — and, finally, confusion and unending torment. And I love singing in French and adore the beautiful, romantic melodies throughout the opera.”

Finally, there is Méphistophélès, the devil with the urbanity of a Parisian boulevardier. Kirk Eichelberger has sung the role for Opera San José, and recently, for Opera Grand Rapids, in Michigan. Eichelberger is a regular at Festival Opera — this is his ninth appearance with the company.

“Michael Morgan is one of my favorite conductors,” he says. “He is extremely musical. He knows when to take the lead and when to follow what I’m doing. Singing for Michael is just effortless. He is so in tune with me and perhaps I, in turn, am in tune with him to the point where it is just effortless music-making. It is a rare thing to find in opera, and it makes me want to sing for him all the time.”

The secondary roles are equally well-cast, so if you’re thinking that this is the second-banana opera, think again.