La damnation de Faust at Nationaltheater Mannheim

He is searching. Looking for himself, looking for his life. He doubts every purpose in life, and is about to poison himself when the easter hymns carry him back to the memories of his childhood and they stop him from going through with it. He is Faust, the eternal doubter, the eternal wanderer. The lonely one. He accepts a meeting with Mephistopheles, who first introduces him to the pleasures in Auerbach’s cellar, and then to pleasures in Marguerite’s bedroom. It appears as if the restless wanderer has finally found his destiny, but the elation lasts only for a short time. Faust goes back to nature, but leaves behind a trail of destruction that ultimately reclaims him and drags him down into hell. The pact that he made was signed voluntarily.

With La damnation de Faust Berlioz belongs to the first artists after Goethe who gave the Faust story a new interpretation of their own. Although he bases his work on that by the German poet, he makes clear already in the title that the focus is on a different story. The music leads the literary motives onto a new level and with an extremely differentiated and varied orchestration Berlioz creates sound pictures that in their extreme contrasts takes the listeners on a fantastic journey.