When the American Opera Company opens its Boston season of two weeks at the Hollis Street Theatre next Monday by presenting Gounod's "Faust," the same production that the students of the University will hear on the specially designated "Harvard Night" on March 23, it will be a rejuvenated "Faust" with several points of novelty. The production aims throughout to represent Goethe's poem as faithfully as Gounod's music. To this end the character of Mephistopheles has been so changed as to make him the embodiment of the negative forces of life rather than the conventional stage devil with incredible horns and tail. The apparent incongruity in the former double role of Faust is alleviated by having two artists sing the separate roles, one representing the aged philosopher, and the other the young man of the world, created by Mephistopheles, the conjurer. The role of Siebel, which is usually sung by a mezzo-soprano, is sung by a tenor. The reason for the change seems very logical, that a man's role should be sung by a man.
An English translation is used of every text by the American Opera Company, which consists entirely of young American singers trained in this country. For "Faust". Robert Simon has prepared a skillfully adapted libretto, while for the other operas English versions have been carefully, through less originally, made. With each piece the singing players seek equally the dramatic values of text, action and song. Vladimir Rosing, as stage director, is the author of these courses. The conductor is Frank St. Leger, formerly of the Chicago Civic Opera Company and of Convent Garden, London. These two men have worked with the company since last summer and have themselves prepared the entire repertoire.
"Opera," according to Rosing, "is of the theatre and for the theatre Public, a public that loves music but wants with it dramatic stage entertainment, that from the point of view of rational treatment, suggestive action, and characterization, will parallel any intelligently produced drama. From this angle 'Faust' has been approached. In Mephistopheles, who of course is the central figure of the story. Goethe was portraying the evil in man's own nature and the denial of morality and conscience, in the opinion of Rosing. This conception, depicting him as the protagonist of the negative to all human aspirations to good and beautiful giving, has been developed by the American Opera Company. In the opening scene, for instance. Faust is discovered in his study, a scholar of middle age, a victim of nostalgia, despairing over the futility of the search after knowledge by forfeiting all life's diversions, speculating on whether after all it may not be better to assent to the aphorism, "evil, be though my good."
Faust, like the necromancers of his day, gazes into a crystal globe, in which the figure of Marguerite appears, just as it might be conjured up by Faust's own fancy. The philosopher declares for pleasure at any price. The stage is darkened for a moment, and there appear seated at a table the youthful Faust and the youthful Mephistopheles, the latter a leader in all the conscienceless episodes of the story to follow. Thus it is made reasonable to regard what happens as a vision to be entertained by a scholar himself. By these means the attempt is made to restore to Gounod's musical classic a dramatic illusion in story that will appeal to the intelligence and will also serve to incorporate, with the music a rational source from which that music may be seen to derive.
The repertory for the coming fortnight includes seven operas beginning with Gounod's "Faust" on Monday evening; "Madame Butterfly" will be given Tuesday evening; "Martha" on Wednesday afternoon; Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" Wednesday evening; "Pagliacci" on Thursday evening and in addition an original program by Michio Ito, Japanese, dancer; Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio" Friday evening; "Faust' Saturday afternoon; "Carmen" Saturday evening. The second week will open with "Martha" on Monday evening; "Pagliacci" Tuesday evening with another Ito dance program; "Faust" Wednesday afternoon;. "The Marriage of Figaro" Wednesday evening; "The Abduction from the Seraglio" Thursday evening: "Faust" Friday evening, which has been designated as Harvard Night; "Carmen" Saturday afternoon; "Madame Butterfly" Saturday evening.
Among the most novel of these operas is Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio", a comedy with a romantic background interspersing speech with song. Two lovers and the Sultan are the Romantic personages, while the keeper of the harem, fat and drunken, and a sportive maid provide the humorous element. It has seldom been performed in this country. The first recorded performance was at Brooklyn in 1860, in Italian, under the title "Belmonte and Constanze". Two years later there was a performance in German at the German Opera House in New York.
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