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Faust State Opera Vienna - Wien Thu 06.Nov 2025 replace me !Faust State Opera Vienna - Wien Sun 09.Nov 2025 replace me !Faust State Opera Vienna - Wien Wed 12.Nov 2025 replace me !Faust State Opera Vienna - Wien Sat 15.Nov 2025 replace me !Old Faust is tormented less by the question of "what holds the world together at its core" than by his longing for love and youth.
Méphistophélès, less an intellectual "principle of negation" than a devilishly attractive magician, draws his attention to Marguerite - and Faust is delighted. A deal is quickly struck: the devil serves Faust on earth, and after Faust's death it is to be the other way around. Marguerite is also not unimpressed by what Méphistophélès has to offer: material luxury and sensual pleasure, often musically illustrated by Gounod with a waltz. But the relationship between Faust and Marguerite remains an episode, as Faust is drawn to new attractions, while Marguerite remains pregnant, only to see her unfaithful lover kill her brother.
The tenor aria "Salut, demeure chaste et pure" ("Greetings to me, chaste and pure dwelling") is exemplary of Charles Gounod's treatment of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's tragedy: on the one hand, the text is based almost literally on the original, while on the other, the music adds so much languorous emotion that some guardians of the German culture of sensual refinement found it too much. While Faust sings of the "innocent and divine soul" of the absent Marguerite, the solo violin nestles up to his melody like a duet partner. "The melody is delightful", even the Gounod skeptic Hector Berlioz found in his first performance review: "People applauded, but not enough, the aria deserved a hundredfold applause."Gounod's Mephistophelean principle of seduction to sensuality was also effective in the transmission of this opera: around a third of the planned text had already been cut before the premiere. Numbers that had already been composed and then discarded were lost or ended up in attics along winding paths, only to be rediscovered over 100 years later. In the meantime, the international opera business created its own body of work, a process in which sensual melodies and sonorous choruses prevailed over any intellectual doubt. Gounod presents himself as an experienced church musician in the scene in the cathedral, which musically anticipates the opera's optimistic ending: Marguerite, who risked and lost everything for her love, is saved from eternal damnation.(Source: wiener-staatsoper.at)
