Terry Gilliam's Faust

[gamba]

Due for transmission 7.30 pm this Fri. 14th. Oct. on BBC 4.

Can anyone throw some light on this performance. Is it 'way-out,' if so, how far out !

Does it, in fact, bear any resemblence to the original opera.

[mercia]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/8502174/The-Damnation-of-Faust-ENO-Coliseum-review.html

http://gilliamfaust.com/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/may/07/the-damnation-of-faust-review

[Ravensbourne]

I enjoyed it. I tend not to think of it as an original opera in any case. Berlioz called it a légende dramatique.

[gurnemanz]

We also enjoyed it. According to a feature in the Indie he's giving up films and working on another hard-to-stage Berlioz opera - Benvenuto Cellini - which is an intriguing prospect .

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/terry-gilliam-i-used-to-think-i-could-will-things-into-existence-not-any-more-2368120.html

[gamba]

Thank you all, especially the 'clip' from 'mercia' - I shall both watch & record for posterity !

[Bert Coules]

No comments, now it's been broadcast? I saw (and enjoyed) it in the theatre and thought it worked just as well if not better on the box. A curious decision to subtitle the choruses but nothing else, though.

[Mary Chambers]

I didn't expect to like it, but I thought it was brilliant - just really good, imaginative theatre. I was very impressed by the singing of both Peter Hoare and Christopher Purves. Chorus not wonderful, though, particularly the women who seemed wobbly much of the time.

[Bert Coules]

The night I was there, that stunning staging of the Radetzky March was greeted by a solitary (but very loud) boo. We heard no more from the booer, though: he either left, was won over, or was forcibly silenced. I too thought the principals were splendid: presumably the title role was written for that typical rather bloodless fluting French high tenor voice, but it sounds well when tackled by someone beefier: Alberto Remedios was tremendous in the part at the ENO in the seventies, opposite Janet Baker.

Now let's have someone offer Gilliam the Ring...

[Chris Newman]

Bert, I thought they used the subtitles for the choruses was because the words were harder to catch whereas all the soloists were as crystal clear as the good old Sadler's Wells days at the Coliseum. I know what you about mean about Peter Hoare and his fluting top notes. Hearing the likes of Andre Turp and Alberto Remedios has perhaps spoilt us. I took a long time to get used to Nicolai Gedda in the role on several recordings with his countertenor top notes but the clarity and beauty elsewhere make up for it.

I support the idea of a Gilliam Ring, though I cannot get rid of the Pythonesque image of Fafner as a giant foot squashing Fasolt in Rheingold.

[Bert Coules]

Chris, I'm sure you're right about the subtitles. An interesting approach. I didn't make myself clear about Hoare: I thought he was somewhat towards the beefy (or at least beefyish) end of the tenorial spectrum: like you, I've heard far thinner voices in the part. For me, it was only in his extreme top notes that he went down that path.

I like your Rheingold image. Why not? I've seen far less apt (and far less original, for the avant garde has created its own clichés) stagings.

[Chris Newman]

I agree that the Radetsky March was stunning staging. Back in the days of the Michael Geliot/Charles Mackerras production with Margaret Curphey and later Janet Baker we were all bowled over by his use of a giant banner (like a Bayeux Tapestry) paraded across the stage by the chorus with increasingly strobic lights. Now that seems quite tame compared with Terry Gilliam's two levels of narrative where as well as the familiar Faust story Gilliam's introduction of the rise of facism/communism/totalitarianism twists the story as much up to date as most modern productions of Fidelio or Macbeth.

At first, influenced by reviews I had read, I thought of Caspar David Friedrich as the influence on the vast mountain vistas of the opening scenes but having last week been to the John Martin Apocalypse exhibition at the Tate Britain I think Hildegard Bechtler's seemingly Germanic set was drawn from the British arch-Romantic, especially as it turns red and volcanic before disappearing in World War One. That Tardis-like laboratory/lecture theatre that Peter Hoare carried was a masterpiece. I notice he had bruises; we suffer for our art.