Review: Mefistofele

For slightly-more-than-casual opera goers, Arrigo Boito is maybe the third-best-known opera librettist, after Metastasio and Da Ponte. (This is not counting, for completely arbitrary reasons, W.S. Gilbert, who since the decline of opera seria is the only opera librettist to regularly have his name listed before the composer, as well as Richard Wagner, who, of course, wrote his own libretti.)

Boito is best known for his work with Giuseppe Verdi. They collaborated on Otello and Falstaff, both generally regarded to be masterpieces, and Boito also worked on the revised version of Simon Boccanegra, which is as underrated an opera as there ever was. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Mefistofele, the one complete extant opera for which Boito wrote both text and music, should have as well-constructed a libretto as you could hope for. And it does. The biting question is, does the music match up?

A scene from Boito's Mefistofele

Photo by Karen Almond

Yes. It absolutely does.

I saw Mefistofele at the Metropolitan Opera last night, and left feeling like I had just seen a pretty perfect opera. The story, as you might have guessed, is that of Faust, but Boito refocuses it. He makes Mefistofele the POV character, and thereby has a great advantage over Gounod. Instead of following Faust around on zany adventures as he tries to live life to its fullest, we follow Mefistofele around as he drags Faust from place to place, trying to win his soul. The opera therefore has an episodic nature that is fully justified, and the bizarrerie of events do not register as bizarre, as it is clearly in Mefistofele's interest to keep Faust on his toes. The big gap in Margherita's story, as well as her inexplicable redemption (two elements that bother me immensley in Gounod's version) pass without comment here, because the story is no longer about Faust.

This was helped greatly by Robert Carsen's production, which is framed as a play-within-a-play. The angels watch the events on earth play out on a stage, and Mefistofele directs the action. Three layers of curtain, a double proscenium, and, in the fourth act, a row of footlights, define the space. The sets are all constructed artifice, with the back wall of a stage visible behind them. At the same time, the sets have realism within their confined space. Margherita's story occurs almost entirely on an isolated turntable with trees on it, and though the space is clearly artificial because of its context on the stage, within itself, it is completely real. A similar effect occurs with the Troy set in Act IV, which is made to look like a Baroque opera with its painted backdrop and placement of the actors. Mefistofele even makes his first entrance popping out of the orchestra pit complete with violin, and he breaks the fourth wall constantly in his staging, which lent a healthy dose of comedy to the proceedings. All of this further supported the stylism of the opera itself, and made perfect sense of what I had heard was an awfully confusing, or, in Verdi's words, "strange" opera.

The title role was played with gusto by Richard Tucker Award recipient Christian Van Horn. With a powerful bass voice, and great charm, it's not often that an opera leans this much on a star bass lead. Van Horn absolutely did the role justice, and gave a resounding whistle to boot. (I imagine the whistle is the primary difficulty in casting this role.)

Faust was played magnificently by Richard Tucker Award recipient Michael Fabiano. He played a highly convincing older Doctor Faust in Act I, before becoming the rejuvenated heroic tenor in the subsequent acts. Michael Fabiano has not especially wowed me in the past, but in this role, he more than amazed.

Margherita, a role much reduced in this opera as compared to Gounod's, was none the less portrayed memorably by Richard Tucker Award recipient Angela Meade. Meade has a wonderful talent for this half-century of Italian opera, and her messa di voce was magnificent as ever.

In a featured spot in Act IV was Jennifer Check as Helen Of Troy. Jennifer Check has not received the Richard Tucker Award, but that hardly means anything. In her one short act, she completely stole the show.

And the stars of the show may well have been the Met Opera chorus, who have a lot to do in this opera, bookending the prologue and epilogue with a glorious "Ave Signor," and doing a lot in the middle beside. They took a mock-curtain-call at the end of Act II, which was part of the production, but still more than deserved.

According to the program notes, Mefistofele did not do so well at its premiere in 1868. It was apparently too modern, and did not really achieve success until Boito made revisions in the 1870s, and musical tastes caught up with him in the 1880s. Much of the music did remind me of Mascagni and Sullivan, but of course Boito predates both.

The music is marvelous all the way through, and Boito demonstrates a great understanding of typical operatic styles and forms. Each character has their own distinct and well-defined tone. Mischievous for Mefistofele, plaintive for Faust, rustic for Margheritta, romantic for Helen, and majestic for the chorus, except for in the Witch's Sabbath scene, in which the chorus is chaotic. Mefistofele himself is, as you might expect, associated with bassoon, as well as plucked strings. (Cues which Sullivan' might have picked up for The Golden Legend.)  Margheritta's music evokes Donizetti and Bellini (her and Faust's duet at the top of Act II sounded like a reference to L'Elisir D'Amore) while Helen's music evokes French grand opera, and Boito may even have taken cues from Gounod for her duet with Faust. (Her little aria preceding the duet seems to be a parody of Meyerbeer.) Boito is not as natural a composer as his contemporaries Verdi and Wagner, but he is an intelligent dramatist who knows how opera works, what tricks to deploy, and where.

I would not hesitate to call Mefistofele a masterpiece. (It certainly is Boito's.) From the beginning "Ave Signor" through the raucous carnival scene, the charming Act II quartet, the hectic Witch's Sabbath, Margheritta's haunting Act III aria (actually, the whole haunting Act III), Helen and Faust's sweeping duet, all the way to Faust's chillingly plaintive epilogue aria, the opera engrosses thoroughly. As to why the opera is not performed more often, I understand the reasons (difficultly in casting the lead, difficulty in mounting such a large scale opera, insufficient popularity to cover costs), but it is an awful shame that it isn't.