256. Doktor Faust (Busoni)

• Composer / libretto: Ferruccio Busoni
• First performed: Sächsisches Staatstheater, Dresden, Germany, 21 May 1925, conducted by Fritz Busch

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Characters

DOKTOR FAUST	Baritone	Robert Burg
WAGNER, his famulus, later Rector magnificus	Bass	Willy Bader
MEPHISTOPHELES	Tenor	Theo Strack
THE DUKE OF PARMA	Tenor or baritone	Josef Correck
THE DUCHESS OF PARMA	Soprano	Meta Seinemeyer
MASTER OF CEREMONIES	Bass	Adolf Schoepflin
THE GIRL’S BROTHER, a soldier	Tenor or baritone	Rudolf Schmalnauer
A Lieutenant	Tenor	Ludwig Eybisch
Three Students from Krakow	Tenor Tenor Bass	E. Meyerolbersleben Paul Schöffler Wilhelm Moy
Theologian	Baritone	Robert Büssel
Jurist	Baritone	Wilhelm Moy
Natural scientist	Baritone	Heinrich Hermanns
Four students in Wittenberg	Tenor Tenor Tenor Baritone	Heinrich Tessmer E. Meyerolbersleben Ludwig Eybisch Paul Schöffler
Five spirit voices: Gravis Levis Asmodus Beelzebuth Megarös	Bass Bass Baritone Tenor Tenor	Heinrich Hermanns Robert Büssel Paul Schöffler Heinrich Kuppinger Ludwig Eybisch
Churchgoers, soldiers, courtiers, Catholic and Lutheran students, peasants	Chorus

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For an Italian composer, Doktor Faust is a very German opera: three slow hours of soul-searching, angst, and metaphysics.

It’s generally considered one of the better operas of the twentieth century: the first critics hailed it as the best thing since Wagner’s Parsifal (1882), 40 years before, while Edward J. Dent proclaimed: “One cannot apply to Doctor Faust the ordinary standards of operatic criticism. It moves on a plane of spiritual experience far beyond that of even the greatest of musical works for the stage.” Other critics have been less enthusiastic. The Guardian’s Martin Kettle finds the work “irreducibly problematic”, intellectually stimulating, but not entertaining: “It stands as a triumphant failure, compelling and yet alienating, neither an end of an old era nor the start of a new one”. In his review of a modern American production, he notes that many in the audience left after the interval.

Unlike the other Faust musical-theatrical works (Schumann; Berlioz, 1846; Gounod, 1859; Boito, 1868), Doktor Faust is based not on Goethe, but on puppet plays. (For one thing, there’s no rejuvenation and no Gretchen / Marguerite; in fact, the only woman is the Duchess of Parma, who only appears in a couple of scenes.)

The structure is idiosyncratic:

•  Symphonia (brooding, rather dull and formless)
• A Poet addressing the Audience
• Prologue, in 2 parts (Faust makes the pact with Mephistopheles)
• Intermezzo (a church in Munster: a soldier, the brother of a maiden Faust ruined, is killed)
• Hauptspiel [the Main Play]
  • Scene 1 (the Ducal Park in Parma: Faust conjures up visions of various Biblical character to seduce the Duchess)
  • Symphonic Intermezzo (Sarabande)
  • Scene 2: Tavern in Wittenberg (philosophical debates and a dead baby, made of straw)
  • Last Scene: A Street in Wittenberg (Faust dies)

Busoni left the opera unfinished when he died in 1924. His pupil Philipp Jarnach completed the appearance of Helen and the final scene; there were further editions by Anthony Beaumont (using Busoni’s sketches, 1982) and Larry Sitsky (2007).

The score occupies a space between the late Romantic and the Modernist idioms. Busoni said he sought to maintain a linear polyphony (the orchestra uses pure melodic lines that intersect and support each other independently, leading to the emergence of harmony); and to create an acoustic perspective by having music played and sung “behind the stage”. Like Berg and Hindemith, he emphasises structure: the Scenic Intermezzo is a rondo; and the ducal party is a ballet suite, a kind of pantomime ending in a freer dramatic action. Much of the score draws on his earlier music: for instance, the Symphonia reuses his Nocturne symphonique; the first part of the prologue reuses his 2^nd Sonatine for piano; and the Parma scene reuses the Sarabande et Cortège, the Divertimento for flute, the Toccata for piano. Busoni’s score is obviously well composed, but somehow nondescript; the only ‘tune’ is Ein feste Burg!

The opera is consciously More Important and Deeper than its 19^th century cousins. Faust longs for genius; he seeks to “embrace the world … to understand all that man has ever done, and beyond his dreams enhance it” – but the first thing he does with his powers is to murder his enemies. From there, he descends into crime: more murder, desecrating a church, adultery, and abandoning his pregnant mistress. He is prone to waxing philosophical: about man’s failure to grasp the ideal, or to meet his ambitions. There is a tedious scene of students quarrelling about Plato and Luther (and smashing plates); the point of the scene seems to be that we can’t say what the point of life is (we arrive and we depart), but that wine, women, art, song and music enhance life. The opera ends with Faust resurrecting a dead child, then dying; Mephistopheles hoists his body over his shoulder and carries it away. This is no doubt very Symbolic, and Means Something Profound.

For all its high-mindedness, it’s difficult to give a damn about what transpires on stage: the libretto is episodic, lacking in dramatic tension, and rather sententious. Ultimately, it’s something of a bore.

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Recordings

Listen to: Dietrich Henschel (Faust) and Kim Begley (Mephistopheles), with the Orchestre et Chœur National de Lyon, conducted by Kent Nagano; Lyon, 1998. Erato.

Watch: Thomas Hampson (Faust) and Gregory Kunde (Mephistopheles), with the Zurich Opera House Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Philippe Jordan; Zurich, 2006.

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Works consulted

• Edward J. Dent, Ferruccio Busoni: A Biography, London: Eulenburg Books, 1974
• Martin Kettle, “New York Faust a triumphant failure”, The Guardian, 19 January 2001
• Piotr Kaminski, Mille et un opéras, Paris : Fayard, 2003
• Geneviève Lièvre, “Le Faust de Busoni”, Opéra de Lyon