FAUST
Charles Gounod 1813-1901
Opéra in five acts
Libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based upon Michel
Carré’s
Faust et Marguerite and the eponymous work by Wolfgang von
Goethe
Premiere: 19 March 1859
Théâtre Lyrique, París
Faust
old age, youth, eternity and their dilemmas
Wisdom and youth at the price of love, the innocence of others and your own soul. That is the essence of Faust: to look in the mirror and see your hidden face. It is the state of inner hell.
The events narrated in Faust take place in the territory of present-day Germany in the 16th Century, but they could be set in any period, and in any place or moment of time, as the two main characters are eternal and universal: God and the Devil. Good and Evil. The masculine and the feminine. The young and the old. Life and death. What is different and, at the same time, what is inseparable.
Charles Gounod portrays with his intense and profound melodic style the journey backwards in time of the elderly thinker Faust, who has reached old age in full possession of his mental faculties; a curse in itself that makes him desperately long for a youth he only knew through books.