Music Director and Conductor: Jan Latham-Koenig
Conductor: Andrey Lebedev
Stage Director: Ekaterina Odegova
Set Designer: Etel Ioshpa
Costume Designer: Svetlana Grishchenkova
Lighting Designer: Nikita Smolov
Choirmaster: Yulia Senyukova
Drama Advisor: Mikhail Muginshtein
Performed in French with Russian Subtitles
harles Gounod’ Faust after the Goethe tragedy enjoys pride of place among the operas that captured Russian hearts back in the 19th century. The opera almost immediately gained popularity in Russia. The Bolshoi Theatre staged the first version in 1866, just seven years after the Paris premiere.
Faust is quite literally part of Russian and Moscow opera culture. Among the exited admirers of this piece was a young doctor who later became a famous writer and playwright, Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940). Gounod’s opera is a recurrent character in Bulgakov’s work, and it is mentioned in the novel Master and Margarita.
The Novaya Opera Theatre presented its Faust in the year of the 150th anniversary of the opera’s Moscow premiere, and of the 125th anniversary of Mikhail Bulgakov’s birth. In this production, made by stage director Ekaterina Odegova and dramatist and opera critic Mikhail Muginshtein, Goethe’s and Gounod’s characters will possess recognizable Moscow features.
In playing with Marguerite and Faust – light and dark, Mephistopheles represents the dialectics of good and evil, raises these forces to the absolute and observes. The demoniac source of energy for life and death is an ever-changing, destructive, but also irresistibly captivating thing. It is a narcotic for the restless Faust: “Satan, have mercy on my long distress!” (Charles Baudelaire). Signing the contract with Mephistopheles is a mere formality, a trick. Mephistopheles will get Faust’s soul de-jure, but he already possesses it de-facto. Even before appealing to Satan, Faust curses faith and God. For him Dieu (God) is identical to Rien (Nothing). God is something permanent, complete and ideal. The embodiment of the Divine on the earth is Marguerite, a romantic’s woman. But in the end, the ideal woman for a romantic is a dead woman. Only the death of an ideal can be proof of its phenomenon (from Wagner’s Senta to Verdi’s Desdemona). That’s why for Mephistopheles Faust is not the aim, but a means to achieve it in the struggle for the maiden’s soul. And Marguerite saves her soul with the light of faith and integrity. No matter how the loving soul suffers, its suffering will never win it joy, though it might come to realize itself, wrote the poet Fyodor Tyutchev. Marguerite’s exhausted, hard-won soul deserves the light. The journey of the romantic Faust is over. He has seen God in Marguerite. But Faust deserves neither the light nor peace…
The three main characters are associated with three scenic leit-motifs: light(from a light bulb to jack-o'-lanterns), movement (the devil’s energy), a handkerchief. An armchair scientist (Faust) and an ecumenical philosopher (Mephistopheles) contrast not only in the scale and way of learning, but also in its tool. Faust’s devices and instruments are useless before the optics of the Devil’s camera obscura. In conclusion we’d like to emphasize the fact that the action is not linear, the journey through time and space dictates the form: from Faust’s black study to Mephistopheles’ black study (Acts 1 and 5), through a medieval German town (Act 2) and a romantic garden (Act 3) with their mirror reprise (Act 4).
- Home
- |
- Tours
- |
- Day tours
- |
- Rail tours
- |
- Shore excursions
- |
- My trip
- |
- About
Group Tour Packages
Company Information
US office
3422 Old Capitol Trail Suite 1252,
Wilmington DE, 19808 USA.
US toll-free: 1-888-845-8877
Russian office
Ligovsky pr. 57, Office 19,
191040, St. Petersburg, Russia
tel: +7-812-309-5339
© 2001 – 2024 by Northern Crown, Ltd. uVisitRussia and uVisitRussia.com are registered trademarks. Terms & Conditions Privacy Policy
Why Do You Need Our Travel Expert
Contact our experts, and they will help you to plan your best trip to Russia, with attention to every detail!
Our Experts have been in the travel industry for many years, guarantee to offer first class customer service, excellent value for money and unbiased advice. They are standing by to find and build your dream holiday to one of the world's most fascinating destinations - Russia.
Your personal Travel Expert will guide you through each stage of the travel process, from choosing a program that fits you best to support during your trip.
Just tell us your e-mail, and we'll take care of everything!
Ask a Travel Expert
Leave your phone number
Your tour request has been received. Thank you !
We have sent you the confirmation message to [email]
Please make sure that you receive this message (sometimes e-mail messages may go to the spam/junk mail).
If you did not get this message, it means you will not get message with the tours' selection as well. If you use a Yahoo!, Gmail, AOL or Hotmail, we recommend to add request@uvisitrussia.com to your address book.
We recommend to leave your phone number. If we will not heard back that you received the e-mail with the tours' selection, we will contact you by phone.
And you will not miss the best tour for you.
Thank you ! Your request for Travel Expert assistance has been sent. We will e-mail you within 1 hour.