Orchestra's "Damnation of Faust' (1st review)

I've reviewed both of the Philadelphia Orchestra's previous performances of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust, and each time I couldn't resist making the same point. Berlioz seized every excuse, no matter how thin, to include any kind of music he felt like writing. He begins with Faust wandering the plains of Hungary, for example, because he wanted to open the show with a bouncy Hungarian peasant dance and a rousing Hungarian military march.

I was pleased to discover from the program notes for this performance that I'm not the only person who has noticed how Berlioz plays fast and loose with the Faust legend. German critics have been particularly incensed by the way Berlioz deviated from Goethe's canonical version.

The Damnation of Faust is essentially a musical variety show with the Faust story winding through it. Its musical pleasures include military marches, student drinking songs, appealing folk-like ballads, sylvan interludes, Latin church music, offstage trumpets, delicate orchestral effects and a satisfactory bit of storm and fury when Faust descends into Hell.

All of the individual items are worth listening to, even if they don't contribute to the basic story line, and they include some of Berlioz's best efforts as a master orchestrator. The best response to Berlioz's treatment of a major legend is to smile and enjoy the show.

Dutoit's mistreatment

It's also the best piece Charles Dutoit could have chosen to conclude his next-to-last year as the Orchestra's chief conductor— an interim appointment he took on after Christoph Eschenbach's sudden, disruptive departure in 2008. The Damnation of Faust employs a big orchestra, but Berlioz doesn't create many grandiose climaxes. Mostly he treats the orchestra as a big pallet. His score demands a conductor who can manipulate colors and create delicate effects.

Dutoit's relationship with the Orchestra and its management is one of the less glorious episodes in Philadelphia's musical history. He's been associated with the Orchestra for 30 years, and he's left his mark on its development. Dutoit would have been a popular choice had he been offered the music director's job during any of the times it's been open. Many people assumed he'd get it sooner or later. Yet the Orchestra's management has consistently snubbed him and granted him peripheral assignments, such as the posts he's held at the Orchestra's summer sessions at the Mann Music Center and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

We're probably better off with a young conductor like Yannick Nézet-Séguin. At this moment in the Orchestra's history, it needs all the dash and spirit Yannick seems to embody. But Yannick's obvious virtues can't erase the Orchestra's shabby treatment of Dutoit.

It's nice to see Dutoit approach the end of his current assignment with a reprise of one of his most memorable performances with the Orchestra.

He conducted it in 1988, the first year I reviewed for the Welcomat, and I remember it very well. So memorable seems apt. That was the first complete performance of the piece in the Orchestra's history. Simon Rattle conducted the second in '09. Before 1988, the Orchestra performed only excerpts.

A reasonable devil

The Damnation of Faust requires good soloists, and Dutoit worked with a group worthy of the occasion. I particularly liked the way David Wilson-Johnson played Mephistopheles. His devil is a reasonable fellow who merely tells you why you'll be better off if you do what he wants you to do—a Don Vito Corleone of tempters.

But the show's megastar was the mezzo-soprano Susan Graham as Marguerite. Berlioz didn't give his female lead much stage time. Graham's character is mostly an object of desire; her big moments are a pair of simple ballads. But Graham made every note count. She possesses a big, hall-filling instrument and she uses it with the skill of an artist who makes everything she does seem natural and unstrained.♦


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