Mefistofele, San Francisco Opera, Sept. 20 2013

San Francisco Opera’s 1989 production of Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele was, and still is, one of my peak experiences in an opera house. The Robert Carsen staging was inventive and served the music and the text rather than doing violence to them. The music was new (to me) and exciting, with lots of superb choral writing. Samuel Ramey as the title character was at the peak of his form. As the announcer on the Sirius/XM Metropolitan Opera channel said, “he was born to perform this role.” Ramey came back for a reprise in 1994. It did not seem to be quite as effective. I wasn’t sure whether the newness and vitality of the opera and its production had worn off, or whether Ramey wasn’t quite the dominating presence that he had been before. Nevertheless,  it was another outstanding performance. Mefistofele then disappeared from the San Francisco Opera stage for many years. Even when Pamela Rosenberg initiated a “Faust Project,” with many different composers’ and librettists’ take on the Faust legend, Mefistofele was conspicuously absent. The one time I ever got to talk with Rosenberg, I asked her about this absence, and she said that the sets had gotten so beat up that they were no longer usable. Furthermore, 1989 had receded further and further into history, and I wondered to myself: suppose they did bring back Mefistofele? Ramey had left a gigantic pair of shoes to fill—would anyone be willing to step into those shoes? I’d love to see Kirk Eichelberger do it, but I knew that would be a long shot.

So I was thrilled to see Mefistofele announced as the opening-night opera for San Francisco’s 2013-2014 season. And they even managed to refurbish, or maybe even reconstruct, the Robert Carsen sets, which appeared to depict God’s own opera house. When the curtain went up for the Prologue in Heaven, it revealed another curtain behind it, this one red, with subtle flame projections playing on its surface. To the left and right of the stage were opera boxes, semicircular projections that each accommodated three angels in white garb and white masks. At the top of the stage were a number of white plaster life-size figures with large wings—more angels, with trumpets to their lips. When the red curtain was raised, we saw a scrim with projections of white fluffy clouds that subtly changed shape and slowly descended to stage level. The illumination was gradually turned up behind the scrim to reveal the back wall of a European-style opera house: five towers each having three levels of semicircular boxes, with three chorus members in each box. More angels/opera patrons were seated on stage. For the end of the Prologue, the seated choristers rose and advanced to the front of the stage as they sang (and the orchestra played) an fff finale. Thrilling!

Act 1 Scene 1 (Easter Sunday) was the most colorful and action-packed scene I have ever seen. Most of the large chorus were dressed in brightly-colored clothes and costumes; there were three stilt-walkers, and several of the chorus wore animal costumes, of which the giraffe was the most obvious. A brief procession carried a statue of Christ through the crowd, and later there were a couple of representations of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, including one in which they ate the apple, cast off several layers of clothes, and then went at each other. A friend whose son was in the children’s chorus in the Prologue and Epilogue told me that the children weren’t allowed to see the rest of the opera. And the sets: the five towers of the Prologue had been repositioned and turned sideways. Their sides looked like time-worn stone walls. But with all the action at the front of the stage, the sets in the background were merely incidental. Act 1 Scene 2 in Faust’s study featured a very long (at least half the width of the stage) refracting telescope that was pointed at a square hole that had been cut at the top left of the red curtain from the Prologue. Through the hole could be seen a number of stars. At the end of the act, Mefistofele attached a rope to a harness that Faust wore, the red curtain was raised revealing (in dim light) the boxes of the opera house, and Faust was hoisted several feet in the air as Mefistofele offers to take him “through the air” to wherever he would like to go.

Act 2 Scene 1 was something of a mystery to me. At the rear of the stage, a very large canvas had been hung in front of the box seats; it was painted with blue sky and white clouds, and two red-headed painters (house painters, not artist painters) were working on it. In the center of the stage was a tilted circular platform with four apple trees growing out of it. Its surface looked like Astroturf, and a number of red apples lay on it. To the right, a supernumerary bent over a bucket of apples, peeling them one by one. Near the end of the scene she got up from her chair and worked a large crank that made the circular platform go round and round. I didn’t get it—but it wasn’t offensive, it just didn’t communicate with me. Act 2 Scene 2 is the Walpurgis Night, otherwise known as the Witches’ Sabbath. The scene began with Mefistofele entering the box seats at the left of the stage, descending a ladder to the stage, then ascending another ladder on the right of the stage, all the while pulling a large golden rope. Then Faust appeared, holding the other end of the rope, and similarly descended the ladder, crossed the stage, and climbed up the other ladder. When the curtain behind them rose, we first saw in the dim light a small moon at the back of the stage, with two strings of Christmas tree lights running from the moon to each side of the front of the stage. As the lights went up, we saw a very long table running from the front of the stage to the back. Witches and warlocks were partying in their underwear. Some appeared to not even be wearing underwear, but close examination revealed unnatural stretch marks in what were otherwise extremely effective body suits. When Faust had his vision of Marguerite, a glass box containing a nude woman appeared above stage level and at the rear of the stage; she turned around very slowly as Faust sang that she resembled his Marguerite.

In Act 3, the death of Marguerite, the set referred back to the apple orchard of Act 2 Scene 1. The circular apple orchard had been devastated: the trees were black, twisted shadows of their former selves, while the circular platform was blackened and devastated, with what seemed like a small sinkhole in the middle. The lighting of the back of the stage was pretty dim, but at least one of the towers of box seats was there, because Faust and Mefistofele sang their first lines from one of the boxes.

Act 4, the Classical Walpurgis Night, also known as the Helen of Troy scene, was set in ancient Greece. (Q: What in the hell is Helen of Troy doing in this opera? A: Helen of Troy is in Goethe’s Faust, but in Part 2. Gounod only used Part 1 for his Faust. Boito tried to incorporate Part 2 into his opera, but Part 2 is largely mystical and philosophical and does not lend itself well to opera. And if you trace the Faust legend back through history, you will find that in some of the oldest legends, Faust marries Helen of Troy and has a child by her.) In front of the scrim there were flat cut-outs of Ionian columns and a Greek temple and various kinds of shrubbery. After the scrim rose, we saw another crowd of seated operagoers toward the back of the stage. After Faust had presented a single red rose to Helen, the crowd stood up and advanced toward the front of the stage, then all of the men (dressed in white tie and tails) each presented Helen with a large bouquet of red roses as Helen dropped Faust’s single rose on the floor.

The Epilogue began in Mefistofele’s dressing room. Toward the right of the stage was a coat hanger on wheels, vaguely similar (but simpler) to what you might find in a hotel to help you move your stuff from your car to your room. The floor was strewn with a number of Mefistofele’s cloaks, while Mefistofele himself sat in a chair and flung playing cards around one by one. As Faust’s death approached and the heavenly chorus began to sing, the red curtain behind them rose to reveal God’s opera house of the Prologue, populated as before with angels in the boxes and angels on stage. Six angels carried Faust’s body toward the rear of the stage, while three angels hoisted Mefistofele, writhing and whistling, and carried him off as well. The chorus and the orchestra again built to a tremendous fff climax, with the same music that ended the Prologue.

Our cast:
Mefistofele: Ildar Abdrazakov
Faust: Ramon Vargas
Wagner: Chuanyue Wang
Margherita/Elena: Patricia Racette
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Production: Robert Carsen

I very much enjoyed the 2013 Mefistofele, though it fell a bit short of the 1989 performances. As others will probably say about Enrico Caruso or Lauritz Melchior or Lily Pons or Maria Callas, I will say about Samuel Ramey that there will never be another Mefistofele to equal his. He owns that role for all time. Abdrazakov certainly sang well enough, but Ramey had more heft and authority in his voice. Ramey also had an authority of movement that is without equal, at least among basses. I have to wonder whether Ramey had ballet training. When a ballet dancer simply moves his arm, he does so with an authority that is lacking when a regular person makes the same motion. Ramey had that same kind of authority, which I did not find in Abdrazakov. Boito’s Faust may not be Ramon Vargas’s best role. He sounded pinched and constrained and effortful in his singing. Patricia Racette sang beautifully but she lacked the wow! factor of her Butterfly. The chorus and orchestra were simply magnificent. I saw the dress rehearsal and will see another performance as well, for a total of three, and I wish that my schedule would permit me to see even more. Not quite an alpha.