Reviews of Gilliam’s production of The Damnation of Faust

Philip Stubbs

English National Opera’s The Damnation of Faust, directed by Terry Gilliam, had its first night on Friday 6 May 2011. Below are a selection of reviews from the press – reviews were mixed, but were positive overall. All photographs are by Tristram Kenton for ENO.

The Damnation of Faust – review
The Guardian, May 7 2011

At first sight it seems really perverse to invite Terry Gilliam to cut his teeth as an opera director on a work that isn’t really an opera at all.

Berlioz labelled it a “dramatic legend” and intended it for the concert hall; the pacing of the score, with its extended orchestral interludes and ballads, and character pieces for many of the solo vocal numbers, hardly suggests a living, breathing piece of theatre.

But the hazy dramatic boundaries, and the latitude for interpretation that Berlioz’s recasting of the Faust legend allows, gives a maverick creativity like Gilliam’s the freedom to flourish.

Working together with a creative team of huge experience, he has refracted the story through 100 years of German history and culture, from the 19th century to the Third Reich, from the romantic imagery of Caspar David Friedrich, through the grotesqueries of Otto Dix and George Grosz to Leni Reifenstahl’s film of the 1936 Olympics.

Sometimes too much is packed into each scene – if one imaginative stroke doesn’t quite hit the mark, another is likely to comes very soon after. But the best of what Gilliam comes up with is by turns breathtakingly imaginative and horrifyingly vivid, whether it’s the Hungarian March serving as a backdrop to the outbreak of world war one, Faust’s seduction of Marguerite while Kristallnacht is taking place outside her window, Marguerite’s final scene awaiting the train that will take her to a concentration camp, or Faust and Mephistopheles’s ride to the abyss in motorbike and sidecar.

No punches are pulled, the use of video is perfectly judged, and everything on stage has a musical as well as visual purpose.

Gilliam’s direction of the singers, whether en masse or individually, is detailed and precise too. Christopher Purves, right, as Mephistopheles is the master of ceremonies, by turns suave, demonic or caricature, and commandingly incisve in everything he sings. Peter Hoare as Faust, far right, is a bizarre hybrid between Shockheaded Peter, Friedrich Nietzsche, and a mad scientist; he sings his numbers with great style and sense of line; Christine Rice as Marguerite has two solos, the Ballad of the King of Thule and the Romance, and the still points of beauty. Only the chorus lack of presence disappoints, along with Edward Gardner’s undemonic treatment of some orchestral passages.

The Damnation of Faust

The Observer, May 15 2011

Based on column inches and lurid images alone, never mind the incalculable online torrent, the big event this week was Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust at English National Opera. After squawks over the company’s recent choice of directors from outside opera, it was a pleasure to witness a superbly staged, ingenious production from opera novice Terry Gilliam, best known as a Hollywood director and genius ex-Python animator. If you want to use film in opera, and most now do, Gilliam shows you how.

Musical standards, with Edward Gardner in the pit, were secure though not vintage, and Berlioz’s infinitely delicate score survived just about intact despite being zipped into an all-in-one concept and tumbling out wittily for a choreographic Treaty of Versailles and a dance of the gas masks. The iconography – the 1936 Olympics, Kristallnacht, a glimpse of the Obersalzberg – pinned us firmly at the centre of a wildly spinning wheel of modern German history, with Nazism at the hub.

Berlioz was French, and his view of Goethe, whose magisterial verse drama is his source, is decidedly Gallic but never mind. Unfortunately we owe it to Berlioz to mind. In Gilliam’s hands the work becomes brilliant, zany and entertaining, as this opera-cum-oratorio rarely is in the theatre. This approach ultimately perverts the work itself. It does not, and cannot, support the music. Gilliam’s two mantras, expressed with his irresistible and big-hearted glee in various interviews, are “make it a good show” and “when in doubt, use irony”.

The second of these credos is where the problem lies. It’s hard to think of a work less ironic than Damnation, or Goethe’s original transcendent treatment of the Faust myth. Yes, both have sharp humour, especially in the figure of Mephistopheles, played here by Christopher Purves with wonderfully oily fluency and panache. But if you pile irony on to a romantic text it cumulatively destroys what words and music strive to illuminate.

Love, and a passionate quest for answers to life’s most searching questions, lose sincerity when pushed on to the easier terrain of satire. Berlioz gives us several melting moments, yet their impact is undermined. For Marguerite to address the tender ballad of the king of Thule to a billboard poster of a smiling Aryan soldier who looks like a golden-haired Tony Blair is almost feasible. But to make her Jewish and deport her to a death camp is to turn the plot into a servant of the director’s staging.

This opera is not robust enough to withstand such treatment. Nazis are currently, for better or worse, the height of directorial fashion on the European, and specifically German, stage. You can hardly move for Leni Riefenstahl film clips or views from the Berchtesgaden. A recent Parsifal, and a Rienzi, have tackled the German nation’s own troubled sense of its recent history to shocking effect. Wagner can, and probably should, be beaten into conceptual submission. This is not to admonish Gilliam. Few in the audience will have seen these productions. But it may explain my own sense of a fatal mismatch. Gilliam needs a proper opera on which to lavish his virtuosity. Rossini, for a start, would suit him to perfection, and not necessarily a comedy. How about the neglected tragedy Maometto II?

As Faust, Peter Hoare, a Malcolm McLaren lookalike, overstretched himself a little in the first half but will pace himself as the run continues, with Christine Rice a sympathetic and vocally impressive Marguerite. Hildegard Bechtler’s designs, lit by Peter Mumford and spanning Caspar David Friedrich to art deco, were faultless.

Terry Gilliam’s first opera is a damned fine glimpse of the abyss
Daily Telegraph, May 9 2011

Terry Gilliam was offering hostages to fortune in the interview he gave this newspaper last month: the former Monty Python member and wizard behind the bizarre movie extravaganzas Brazil, Time Bandits and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was rehearsing his first opera production, and the challenge had thrown him into a cold sweat.

ENO has commissioned him to direct a piece never intended for the opera house – Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust is emphatically an oratorio, in which the mind’s eye is required to paint its own visions of infinite landscapes, epic battles, and the abyss of hell.

One can see why the management thought that such a scenario might suit Gilliam, whose style falls squarely into the “phantasmagorical acid trip” category, but the interview suggested that he was floundering out of his depth and complaining that he had been driven so angry with the score that he had “started hitting it”. The omens were not good.

So what a happy surprise to discover that Gilliam was whistling against the wind, and that the chemistry of combining his zany visual imagination with Berlioz’s sublimely individual musical genius has sparked pure theatrical magic. Taking his cue from Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus, Gilliam interprets Berlioz’s version of the legend as an allegory of Germany’s spiritual decline, from the heights of high romantic nature-worship (a mountain-top tableau reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich) through militaristic nationalism (the Radetzsky march) and the First World War (Auerbach’s cellar) to the Nazi catastrophe, in which Marguerite becomes a young Berliner Jew , whom Faust eventually attempts to rescue from a concentration camp.

It might sound corny, clichéd and cheap, but such is the dramatic flair, filmic fluency and sheer inventiveness of Gilliam and his brilliant designer Hildegard Bechtler that the dream-like historical cavalcade, led by Faust as a sort of coxcombed Doctor Who figure, becomes not only coherent and convincing, but also often dazzlingly beautiful and sometimes nightmarishly horrific.

Gilliam’s Faustian Pact
Wall Street Journal, May 13 2011

With varying degrees of success, the English National Opera has been engaging film directors, starting with the late Anthony Minghella, through Penny Woolcock, Des McAnuff and Mike Figgis. But now, triumphantly, Terry Gilliam, the sole American member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, has been entrusted with Hector Berlioz’s “The Damnation of Faust.”

Berlioz, perversely, never intended the piece to be staged. He called it a “concert opera” (or “dramatic legend”) and since its premiere in 1846, it has rarely had a production that won either critical or popular laurels. A succession of familiar tunes, from the “Hungarian March” through the “Song of the Flea,” the ballad of “the King of Thule” to Marguerite’s aria “D’amour L’ardente flame” and Faust’s final “Nature immense, impénétrable et fière,” the work is held together by seven or eight minutes of even more familiar plot. Mephistopheles seduces Faust; Faust seduces Marguerite; she is damned for her sin; Faust sells his soul to the devil; everybody is redeemed, sort of.

Not much drama there, but enough space and oxygen for Mr. Gilliam’s fiery imagination to blaze. He proves he’s not afraid of the obvious by treating Goethe’s Faust story as a thematic and visual parable of German culture and society in the first half of the 20th century. Designer Hildegard Bechtler’s opening set quotes an 1818 painting of Caspar David Friedrich; and the vigorous tenor, Peter Hoare, costumed by Katrina Lindsay in Faust’s frock coat but with a shock of red hair, recreates the solitary figure from the German Romantic artist’s painting, “The Wayfarer Above a Sea of Fog.”

We proceed, with wonderful lighting effects by Peter Mumford and superb video work by Finn Ross, via the imagery of Otto Dix and George Grosz, to a Python-esque view of World War I as an attempt to divide up the world as a cake, using the swords of the crowned heads of Europe, and then another Python touch of a cavalry charge on hobby horses. Mephistopheles (the suave Christopher Purves) reveals Faust’s dreams by letting him, Walter-Mitty-like, assist in battlefield surgery.

At a Bierkeller during the Weimar Republic, Brander’s (Nicholas Folwell) song is anti-Bolshevik, and we suddenly see that everyone present is a Nazi Brown Shirt. The cabaret number, the “Song of the Flea,” is anti-Semitic, Jews are beaten up, and Faust is revolted. Next he is at a cocktail party for the German High Command, catches sight of Marguerite (magnificently sung and acted by Christine Rice) and witnesses a hilarious Wagner-pastiche entertainment.

Leni Riefenstahl’s massed athletes celebrate the 1936 Olympic games and Kristallnacht is all the fault of demonic sprites, who round up hordes of Jews. Marguerite turns out to be Jewish herself, kinkily fantasizing about the blond Nazi on the poster she sees from her bedroom window. She’s sent to a death camp. Faust burns his books. The final tableau is chilling.

As an ex-Python Mr. Gilliam surprises us by finding little humor in the jackboots and goose-stepping. His Faust is funny in places; but what impresses is his consistent, full embrace of the horrific tragedy of the failure of German culture. His success must be measured, too, not just in how profoundly and disturbingly he’s marshaled the familiar imagery and vast cast, but how carefully he’s listened to the music, and treated conductor Edward Gardner as a full partner in this dazzling enterprise.

Terry Gilliam’s Gas-Chamber ‘Faust’ Is Sick Joke
Bloomberg, 10 May 2011

Terry Gilliam, the Monty Python cartoonist and Hollywood film maker, serves up impressive spectacle and insalubrious taste in his Holocaust-based “The Damnation of Faust” at English National Opera in London.

The opera novice turns Berlioz’s 1846 opera-oratorio into a gallows-humor show about the rise of National Socialism.

Faust (Peter Hoare, made to look like the odd anti-hero of David Lynch’s film “Eraserhead”) is a dreamy German thinker. He first appears against the kind of sublime romantic landscape made famous by painter Caspar David Friedrich.

Hildegard Bechtler creates stylized sets with plenty of wow factor.

Then along comes jolly Mephistopheles (Christopher Purves), who lures Faust into the bombastic grandeur of Nazism. He even conjures up a razzle-dazzle choreographed recreation of the 1936 Berlin Olympics to tempt him.

The members of the somewhat portly male chorus, in white shorts and stomach-squeezing corsets, do their best to look like Aryan gods.

Faust falls in love with a young Jewish girl, Marguerite (Christine Rice), and then abandons her. Marguerite is herded off to Auschwitz by the Nazis.

When Mephistopheles offers Faust the chance to rescue her, it leads to the highlight of an evening already bursting with surprising theatrical flair. They jump in a motorbike and sidecar, and take a thrilling night ride among dazzling, whirling video projections.

At the orchestral climax, Faust learns that he has been duped. He’s flung into the gas chamber himself. There are exciting explosions and real flames. He rises from the fire transformed into a surreal human swastika. Flakes of charred flesh then gently flutter over Marguerite’s body, while a celestial choir hymns her soul.

It looks expensive, and feels cheap as hell.

Should the Holocaust be trivialized this way for the sake of a coup de theatre? Is a jokey, cool, ironic tone really appropriate for the subject? Gilliam offers no new insights into anti-Semitism or the rise of German militarism.

Kristallnacht as a lively production number. Dancing Nazis. It comes perilously close to a non-parody version of Mel Brooks’s fiction play “Springtime for Hitler,” without the rigorous framing device of “The Producers” to make such a risk of taste acceptable.

Musically, standards are high. Conductor Edward Gardner delights in Berlioz’s exquisite orchestration. Hoare sings with a good ringing timbre, even if his voice tires by the end. Rice brings vocal splendor and touching pathos to Marguerite. Purves, as the uber-Nazi Mephistopheles, offers us a silken baritone, conspiratorial winks at the audience, and deep throaty chuckles.

It’s disturbing, but not in the way intended.

The Damnation of Faust, Coliseum, London
The Independent on Sunday, May 8 2011

If in doubt, stick a swastika on it.

It worked for Alan Coren’s Golfing for Cats. But does it work in The Damnation of Faust? Terry Gilliam’s debut production with English National Opera transposes Berlioz’s légende dramatique to the Third Reich: casting Mephistopheles’s “Song of the Flea” as anti-Semitic propaganda, crucifying a straitjacketed Faust on a giant swastika, and hymning the redemption of Marguerite as her gassed corpse rots on a pile of looted mannequins.

Faust is a first for the film director, animator and ex-Python. Much like his films, Gilliam’s staging is at once ironic, romantic and provocative. He has done his homework, presenting a smooth, if simplistic, reading of German cultural history from Caspar David Friedrich to Berchtesgaden, Valhalla to Belsen. Stagecraft and video projection combine with more impact than in Mike Figgis’s Lucrezia Borgia. The Marche Hongroise is an antic pantomime of Prussian, Russian, Austrian, English and French Empires in conflict (design by Hildegard Bechtler). Act II closes with footage from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, while the Menuet des Follets is a Kristallnacht ballet. These are the big set pieces. But the production sags in the dream-like vapours of what happens between them.

Conductor Edward Gardner has chosen a particular orchestral sound as default and seldom varies its intensity. Excepting the langorous cor anglais solo, what registers is an amorphous pastel wash. Vocally, the choruses lack vitality, and menace is notably absent from the Pandemonium. Though Christine Rice brings voluptuous gravity to Marguerite’s arias, she looks uncomfortable with Gilliam’s characterisation of Goethe’s heroine as a Jewish woman with a sexual craving for brown-shirts. Shock-wigged and clarion-clear in Acts I and II, Peter Hoare’s Faust falters in Acts III and IV. Kinetic energy and musical intelligence are great assets, but the role requires an easy-access high register. As pimp, magician, Kommandant, comedian and MC, Christopher Purves is a seductive Mephistopheles. There’s much to admire and even more to object to in Gilliam’s operatic debut. But added up, all you have is Goethe for Cats, with extra swastikas.

Terry Gilliam talks to Dreams about The Damnation of Faust in 2011