Scenes From Goethe’s Faust
By Sarah Bryan Miller
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
It didn’t take long for the legend to grow. The powerful, wicked necromancer Dr. Faustus became a staple in popular stories, puppet plays, and ballads; in 1587 he was immortalized in Historia von D. Johann Fausten, author unknown, the first of many books to take him up as a subject. The early versions of the story showed Faust choosing to continue in his wickedness and being therefore condemned to everlasting torment. Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, written shortly before his brawling death in 1593, sends its protagonist to the pit, but Goethe’s humanistic vision, begun in the 1770s during the Enlightenment and finally completed in 1832, gives its antihero an out: after enjoying Helen of Troy and other delights of the flesh, Faust repents at the moment of death and gets to spend a blissful eternity as Dr. Marianus, praising God and receiving instruction from the erstwhile Gretchen (one of Goethe’s interpolations), whose appealing character is the focus of most of the later stage versions. The repentance and complete forgiveness of sins at the eleventh hour is fully consistent with Christian theology, though it’s a pretty good bet that Melanchthon wouldn’t have approved.
The material of part one of Schumann’s work is familiar from Gounod, and part three is the final scene of the book, the same texts treated by Mahler. Part two is new to those who know Goethe’s work only through its treatment by other composers; it deals with Faust’s death while accomplishing a noble work to benefit his fellow man–another of Goethe’s additions to the story. The music is a distinctly mixed bag, probably because it was written in bits and pieces over a period of nine years, but it’s all splendidly evocative of the Romantic ideal. The final scene can’t help but suffer in comparison with Mahler’s treatment, but in the earlier scenes Schumann avoids the treacly elements of Gounod’s setting.
If at 61 Peter Schreier should consider stepping down from symphonic singing, he still has a tremendous amount to teach us about the art of lieder singing. On July 30 he presented a thoughtful, moving program of songs by Schubert and Schumann in the Martin Theatre, with Christoph Eschenbach providing a superb example of the accompanist as collaborator.
