Faust       David Rendall
Mephisto    Bryn Terfel
Marguerite  Ann Murray
Brander     Donald Maxwell

Conductor   Andrew Davis

BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus, New London Children's Choir
BBC Symphony Orchestra

The Proms traditionally begins with a "big choral work", and Berlioz's
Damnation de Faust fits the bill surprisingly well. In this performance,
the massed voices provided a generally benign but overwhelming force in the
drama, pulling Faust back from suicide with the (surprisingly mournful)
Easter hymn and carrying Marguerite to heaven at the end. In contrast, the
devil's maniac individual voice, however loud, is always destructive. (The
one negative appearance of a massive chorus is the invasion of the
neighbours, orchestrated by the devil.) It's interesting that Berlioz
completely La Damnation de Faust in 1846, two years before the annus
mirabilis of popular uprising in Europe.

(Incidentally, really I can't buy the "Berlioz was faithful to Goethe in
spirit" line. Berlioz' romanticism is basically Gothic. He loses the
tension and psychological interest of Faust going open-eyed into the wager,
and instead has him softened up by a range of enticing and emotive music,
in a Cook's tour of north European landscapes, until he is ready to sign
anything.)

This performance was splendid in many ways. Andrew Davis and the BBC SO got
new mileage out of the famous bits, making the Hungarian March and the
dance of the spirits irresistable, and the ride into the abyss
spine-tingling, on the level of the shower music in Psycho. David Rendall
replaced Richard Margison as Faust, at short notice but in time to appear
in the programme. He doesn't have Margison's rock-solidity of voice, or a
very big voice, but he was fine as a rather wet and clueless romantic hero.
Bryn Terfel had a great time with eyebrows and popping eyes. (He wound up
the audience and probably the BBC by glaring at someone talking in the hall
between acts. It turned out to be James Naughtie introducing the next bit
for the broadcast.) He sang consistently out of the left side of his mouth,
and sounded strangled at time, particularly a couple of piano high notes
that got completely lost from where I was. I hope he's not going astray.

I was puzzled when I saw that Ann Murray was singing Marguerite. She isn't
a dirndl mezzo by any stretch of the imagination. But Marguerite's music,
when Murray sings it, clearly has something in common with Les Nuits d'Ete.
It's all poetic expression of longing, with none of the bad or mad girl
aspects of other composers' Marguerites/Margaritas. Murray's voice isn't
always beautiful, but her singing and performance tonight expressed the
poetry and the music perfectly. Le roi de Thule, her first aria, was so
introspective that I thought maybe she simply wasn't warmed up. But she
opened out exactly with the drama in the next scene with Faust, and got
every last bit of feeling out of the romance (D'amour l'ardente flamme). I
don't think she'd work on stage, but she was the high point of this
performance for me.

Someone behind me fainted as Murray was singing the romance. He probably
wasn't pregnant, but he might have been having an ecstatic experience.