The New York company adapts the French composer’s classic in a production that proves theatrically inventive but musically uneven.
By
Heidi Waleson
John Taylor Ward and Rachel Kobernick PHOTO: ANDREW BOYLE
New York
Heartbeat Opera’s radical adaptations of classic titles can soar or fall flat, but one constant has always been music director Dan Schlosberg, whose ingenious maverick arrangements—such as February’s “Salome” for eight clarinetists and two percussionists—never fail to stimulate. Until now.
For its production of Gounod’s “Faust,” now playing at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, Francisco Ladrón de Guevara created a 10-musician arrangement that was coarse, un-French and, unusual for this company, sloppily performed under the leadership of violinist Jacob Ashworth, Heartbeat’s artistic director. Potentially interesting timbral choices—such as a harmonium—barely registered; the trumpet dominated the texture at its every appearance; and the percussive piano added to the generally bumptious atmosphere.
It was too bad, because “Faust” can use some rethinking, and director Sara Holdren, who created the two-hour adaptation with Mr. Ashworth, had some smart theatrical ideas. They savvily updated the tale of the aging professor who makes a deal with the devil to regain his lost youth, eliminated choruses, ballets and some recitatives and zeroed in on the characters and the temptations they face. Ms. Holdren’s new, contemporary English dialogue (“Dude, I’m working—no, I won’t do shots with you”), complete with expletives, streamlined the plot and deepened motivations. Siebel, a lovesick boy played by a mezzo in the original, became a female bartender who yearns for Marguerite. Valentin’s brotherly protectiveness of Marguerite read as overbearing from the start; he also seemed to suffer from PTSD when he returned from the war in Act 4.
Mephistopheles, dressed in a series of natty red outfits by Elivia Bovenzi Blitz, stood out as the devil amid the otherwise contemporary costuming, but his blandishments represented evils that the characters were already primed to do. Aided by two black-clad puppeteers, he just made those bad choices easier. Set designers Yichen Zhouand Forest Entsminger devised a collection of movable screens that could suggest the bar or Marguerite’s house, serve as backdrops for eerie shadow puppetry devised by Nick Lehane, or, suddenly translucent, reveal characters lurking behind them. Ms. Zhou also designed the lighting.
In this creepy depiction of the perils of modern life, women still, in theory, have the most to lose, and Faust’s devil-assisted seduction of Marguerite is the heart of the opera. But his apparent remorse over impregnating and then abandoning her, to say nothing of killing her brother, certainly does him no good. And in Ms. Holdren’s production, Marguerite, who ordinarily prays for salvation and finds it in death (she is in prison and set to be executed for killing her baby; in this version, she has had a miscarriage, which makes that even worse), gets a brief epilogue: She, Siebel and her neighbor Marta have a little backyard wine party—with the baby in a bassinet. This feminist reversal of the usual death-of-the-heroine opera scenario is heartwarming, if narratively inconsistent.
The adaptation retained nearly all of Gounod’s many hit tunes. Soprano Rachel Kobernick was a staunch Marguerite with good French diction, but she let loose and became exciting only in her fervent final plea, “Anges purs.” Bass-baritone John Taylor Ward was appropriately sly and seductive as Mephistopheles; tenor Orson Van Gay II was an unnuanced Faust. Alex DeSocio played Valentin as a brute with a vulnerable side, which worked in the context; AddieRose Brown’s velvety mezzo made Siebel’s “Si le bonheur à sourire t’invite,” her attempt to comfort Marguerite, a high point. Eliza Bonet (a suburban cougar Marta) and Brandon Bell (a barfly Wagner) ably rounded out the cast along with Rowan Magee and Emma Wiseman, the sinuous puppeteers.
The singers were not helped by the band; coordination and volume balances were frequently off. A few amusing touches—Mr. Ashworth playing licks on a mandolin, for some nostalgia, and the brightness of the xylophone, played by whoever happened to be free—could not make up for the overall roughness of the musical conception and execution.
Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).
AndyManshel.nyc 