A work as abstract as it is visionary, a symphony as much as an oratorio, La Damnation de Faust raises some universally philosophical questions out of the deepest recesses of romantic legend. Berlioz himself, a composer grappling with his work and haunted by the question of creation, provided La Damnation de Faust with a score as fascinating as it is demanding.

Even before Wagner, Berlioz had the vision of an invisible theatre. With La Damnation de Faust, he contemplated a form of art that strived to distance itself ever further from story-telling, instead placing a powerful – and highly abstract – faith in humanity ahead of the narration. The composer puts Man at the centre of his art and not the story. Of course, Marguerite and Faust are there, but beyond that lies the human desire to control nature, to experience divinity. This creative side of man naturally corresponds to Berlioz who, just as in the Symphonie fantastique, identifies with the work’s central figure. Each part of La Damnation de Faust is a different illustration of this examination of creation: nature, science, but also pleasure, perfect love and divinity – which Faust praises in the invocation to nature. In other words, Berlioz chooses to portray Man in four different ways which he condenses into the character of Faust. Between Earth, Heaven and Hell, Man passes from the most primal of needs to the most incandescent of spiritual quests. The subject in itself is not dramatic, which is why Berlioz sought a different form and why he subtitled his work A dramatic legend in four parts. This is a vocal symphony but also a drama—the imaginary vision of a subject too human to be truly narrated.

Berlioz is to orchestration what Mozart was to melody, Beethoven to form and Bach to counterpoint. A symphony is something of a visionary work. It is abstract music. Berlioz launched into the genre with gusto, but not without questioning its link with the text – most notably through the invention of the symphonic poem (La Damnation de Faust cultivates some very strong connections with them: Lelio, and even more so Romeo and Juliet). In Berlioz's exploration of orchestral sonorities there lies a desire to play with extremes. The composer is equally at home portraying the simplicity of nature at the beginning of “La Damnation” as the martial character of the Hungarian march or the hellish Pandemonium at the work’s climax– with the four bassoons joined by the ophicleide and the racing violins marking that headlong rush into the abyss – and in the same work demonstrating a fluidity and sensitivity in Marguerite’s aria that are reminiscent of his Nuits d’été cycle. The sul ponticello he uses to accompany Mephistopheles or the treatment of the Menuet des follets for three piccolos – truly modern for the times and which must have unsettled listeners – shows to what extent Berlioz was able to find complexity hidden in extraordinary simplicity.

Like Beethoven, Berlioz’s vocal compositions had an instrumental character that made them relatively difficult to sing. The chorus is treated in a rather complex way whilst corresponding well to the treatment of orchestral voices. Berlioz gives unprecedented precision to the nuances – in this regard he was even more “punctilious” than Wagner: he could go as far as using pppp in the pianissimi which was totally new at the time. In fact, Berlioz's orchestral composition explores the extremes to set the universe reverberating. As such, the legend of Faust was a natural choice. This genius of orchestration went on to influence Liszt and Wagner, indeed, Liszt’s Faust Symphony could not have existed without La Damnation de Faust.

The Faust legend has often been revisited by musicians and, from one interpretation to another, a comparison of the different visions of Goethe’s work offers interesting perspectives. Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust, for example, are a sort of German reflection of La Damnation de Faust: during the same period, we find a similar type of orchestration, misunderstood by musicians and public alike. Schumann, like Berlioz, chose different scenes in the work, hence the explicit title: Scenes from Goethe’s Faust. While the two works may seem similar it is clear that two different cultures are at play: The French composer has a highly dramatic vision of things, whereas with Schumann, it is the humanist aspect that stands out—and that is much closer to the second part of Goethe’s Faust. For Schumann, redemption is more important than in the French vision, which by nature has more of a Latin and Catholic sensibility. For Schumann, Mephistopheles is a very dark, sombre character, whereas Berlioz and Boito both set aside some comic scenes for the flamboyant character. Schumann refuses to make us laugh. In the 20^th century, Busoni manages to bring together all of these aspects in his own Doktor Faust. With Gounod, on the other hand, the central subject is Marguerite. In this case it is less about questioning human existence than recounting a story. Conversely, with Berlioz, when Faust invokes nature at the end of the work, it is the result of an exploration of the greater universe, as opposed to a focus on creation that his first words implied. It is no longer a simple, immediately accessible nature, but a much larger, more profound spiritual quest in which the character of Marguerite is finally forgotten.

Just as the invocation of this “immense nature” changes as the character develops, La Damnation de Faust leads the listener forward in a subtle and unremitting crescendo, towards an ever-greater unity. The end result brings sense to the abstraction of a work composed of disparate scenes which through this inherent complexity acquires a quality and a depth which in my view makes it one of Berlioz’s most interesting.

Philippe Jordan is Musical Director of the Paris Opera.

Despite the extensive role played in our societies by science and knowledge, we still have an unquenchable thirst for myths that can elucidate our present. Through its very structure, the story of Faust – probably the myth par excellence of the 19^th century, along with Don Juan – seems to provide dazzling proof of this persistent longing: Faust is damned; science dies with him, but the myth lives on.

When Alvis Hermanis was given the tricky task of staging a new version of La Damnation de Faust, with Philippe Jordan conducting, he sought a contemporary figure into which he could transpose this myth and give it shape. He found it in Stephen Hawking: a brilliant scientist through whose eyes he reinterprets Berlioz’s disjointed, dramatic legend. Photographer Éléna Bauer has captured the seething energy of a show in the construction process.  

Stephen Hawking, now 73, is considered by his millions of admirers throughout the world as one of the greatest living scientists, if not the greatest: the legitimate heir to Albert Einstein. Like him, he pursues the dream of discovering The Unified Field Theory, or The Theory of Everything: the Holy Grail of modern physics that would make it possible to describe all the forces governing our universe, from microscopic interactions to the movements of stars and galaxies, in a single formula.

The same hunger for knowledge burns in Faust and Hawking alike. On several occasions, Hawking has declared himself an atheist, who considers Paradise merely a story told to comfort children afraid of the dark. And yet, in talking about the Theory of Everything, he produces a formula as Faustian as it is ambiguous: “If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God.”

Hawking’s limitless libido sciendi is all the more speaking because it contrasts painfully with his diseased body: towards the end of his degree, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a rare and incurable neurodegenerative disorder that has developed inexorably throughout his life, leaving him entirely paralysed. He has to use a wheelchair to move around, and a computer that detects his facial muscle movements in order to communicate.

Hermanis is fascinated by the dazzling intelligence and paradoxes of this powerful mind. He has perceived a tragic contradiction between the now total paralysis of Hawking’s body and the nonetheless infinite possibilities of his intellect, and has asked the dancer Dominique Mercy of the Tanztheater Wuppertal to play him on stage. With him, he has conceived an astonishing scene for the finale (the Chorus of Celestial Spirits), which pays tribute to the possibilities of the human intelligence and imagination.

Bryn Terfel plays a profoundly cynical Mephistopheles: a personification of science without a conscience, who sees human beings as guinea pigs and morality as a mere detail in the grand march of technological progress. He orchestrates Faust’s metaphysical journey, which here becomes an interstellar exodus.

In the face of approaching ecological disaster, overpopulation and the depletion of our natural resources, Professor Hawking is one of those who think that, in order to survive, the human race should leave Earth and set off into space to colonise other planets. Hermanis relates to this anticipation scenario – this headlong flight in response to the collective suicide currently being enacted by the human race itself.  

The stage director was inspired by the project Mars One, which aims to send a hundred or so carefully selected participants to the Red Planet by 2025. He sees this project as the most contemporary manifestation of a wild dream that has driven humans to want to leave their earthly existence ever since Antiquity. He read and re-read the testimonies of the men and women ready to accept this one-way ticket, exploring their motivations: what makes individuals want to abandon everything that makes up their lives, and agree to such a pact?

Choreography plays a leading role in La Damnation de Faust, which contains several ballet scenes and symphonic passages ideal for dance. In this production, the choreographer Alla Sigalova gives it a role that goes considerably beyond the limits of these danced sections. The group of dancers becomes one of the principal themes of the show, embodying both Faust’s state of mind and the human community preparing to leave Earth.

To conceive this Damnation de Faust, Alvis Hermanis collaborated with video director Katrīna Neiburga – a first-class artist who represented Lithuania at the Venice Biennial last year. As well as using video sequences she herself has produced, the Paris Opera has collaborated with NASA, the European Space Agency and the CNES (French National Space Centre), together with the production companies of several films that have made their mark over the last few years, such as Microcosmos and Le Peuple des Océans – films that have magnificently celebrated the miracle of our planet. With this precious material, Neiburga has devised a kind of video architecture: a weird and fantastical journey that takes us far beyond our world.

Simon Hatab  is a dramatist at the Paris Opera.

During the summer break, we offer our readers a retrospective glaze on Stéphane Lissner’s first season at the Paris Opera. Singers, stage directors, stage designers… The season 15/16 hosted the debuts at the Paris Opera of numerous acclaimed artists. Looking back on a season-manifesto.    

This production of Platée directed by Laurent Pelly must be a timeless classic: season after season, it conveys an ever renewed pleasure. Furthermore, it still succeeds to surprise us and make us burst into laughter. One must admit that this time, the show could rely on the presence of Julie Fuchs, soprano of a rising generation, who was making her debut at the Paris Opera and enchanted the audience with her interpretation of La Folie.

The inaugural event of this season unquestionably was Arnold Schönberg’s Moses und Aron given for the first time at the Opera Bastille. Stage director, creator of shows for theatre and opera that are as many visual shocks, the Italian Romeo Castellucci confronted himself to this biblical tale about a people’s wandering and the limits of speech. The term “confrontation” isn’t an overstatement when considered the importance of image in Castellucci’s aesthetic, importance that is precisely questioned by Schönberg in his opera. From this dialectical opposition between a major contemporary artist and one of the 20^th century’s most fascinating works emerged a memorable artistic gesture, an aesthetic manifesto : on the vast stage of the Opera Bastille, a desert stretched itself out – firstly white then painted black – until ironing out the chorus, while Schönberg’s notes resounded relentlessly.

Another high point of the season was the dual evening bringing together Béla Bartók’s Le Château de Barbe-Bleue and Francis Poulenc’s La Voix humaine in a production by Krzysztof Warlikowski. This wasn’t the Polish stage director’s first experiment at the Paris Opera. Among his various productions, one remembers Iphigénie en Tauride (which will be revived next season) L’Affaire Makropoulos or Le Roi Roger… For his anticipated comeback, he attempted creating close dramaturgical links between Bartók’s opera and Poulenc’ lyrical tragedy. The result of this double bill is a strange and fascinating theatrical and musical object, an intense experience for the audience. Under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan made her Paris Opera debut and offered an incandescent performance in the role of La Voix humaine’s passionate and suicidal lover: she literarily self-consumes on stage with a fire that doesn’t burn out until Poulenc’s last chords.

For his Paris Opera debut, Latvian stage director Alvis Hermanis took over the myth of Faust and turned it into a very contemporary re-envisioning: basing himself upon the “Mars One” project which intends to colonize the planet Mars, seeing in cosmologist Stephen Hawking the scholar’s rightful heir, he imaged a production where the pact between the scholar and the Devil becomes a one-way ticket to the Red Planet. Under the musical direction of Philippe Jordan, Jonas Kaufmann, Bryan Hymel, Bryn Terfel and Sophie Koch were an outstanding vocal cast. 

Rarely had a show gathered such a perfect cast: on the occasion of Il Barbiere di Siviglia’s revival in Damiano Michieletto’s electrifying staging, Lawrence Brownlee and Pretty Yende lent their voices to Count Almaviva and to Rosina. The South-African soprano, who was making her Paris Opera debut, composed on stage a powerful Rosina, whom her old fogey of a guardian had a hard time keeping captive… She’ll be back on the Opera Bastille’s stage in the title-role of Lucia di Lammermoor next season while Damiano Michieletto returns for a new production of Samson et Dalila to be discovered from the 4^th of October.

Unanimously acclaimed from New York to Salzburg, stage director Claus Guth hadn’t yet had the opportunity to direct a production for the Paris Opera. It now has been done with Rigoletto, for which he offered, as always, a chilling a chirurgical vision turning Gilda, the fool’s daughter, into the object of every fantasy: the opportunity for Olga Peretyatko to make a remarkable debut alongside Quinn Kelsey. A production that will be revived as soon as next season. 

Last new operatic production of the season, the representation of Aribert Reimann’s Lear based on Shakespeare for the first time in its original language at the Palais Garnier, was one of the high points of this season. On the occasion, stage director Calixto Bieito offered a breathtaking show, living up to the Shakespearian drama. So as to make us eager to discover his Carmen programmed next season… Remembering Bo Skovhus’ stunning interpretation of this king at death’s door still sends shivers down one’s spine…