Doctor Faust (Busoni)
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| Title: | Doctor Faust |
| Shape: | Poetry for music in two preludes, an interlude and three main images |
| Original language: | German |
| Music: | Ferruccio Busoni |
| Libretto : | Ferruccio Busoni |
| Premiere: | May 21, 1925 |
| Place of premiere: | Semperoper Dresden |
| Playing time: | about 3 hours |
| Place and time of the action: | Wittenberg and Parma, the end of the Middle Ages |
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Doctor Faust is an opera (original name: "Poetry for Music") by Ferruccio Busoni in two preludes, an interlude and three main images. The German language text comes from the composer himself. Busoni left the work unfinished. The premiere took place posthumously on May 21, 1925 in a completion by his pupil Philipp Jarnach in the Semperoper Dresden.
action
The poet to the audience
The poet steps in front of the curtain, expresses reasons for choosing the Faust material and names puppetry as the most important source. This is followed by a symphonia with "Easter vespers and spring germs".
Foreplay I
Wittenberg
The artist Faust in crisis. He sees his work failed. His assistant Wagner announces three students from Krakow. They bring the book Clavis Astartis Magica , from which Faust hopes new inspiration.
Prelude II
The same room at midnight
With the help of the book, Faust conjures up six ghosts at midnight and asks how fast they are. The answers to the first five do not live up to his expectations. The sixth spirit, Mephistopheles, promises to be as quick as “as the thought of man” and asks Faust for his wishes. Faust demands genius, Mephistopheles can only offer him wealth, power and fame. Faust resists the pact of the devil until he realizes that his house is surrounded by enemies. Mephistopheles makes Faust's wish to murder his enemies come true. Faust has to sign.
Interlude
Ancient Romanesque chapel in Wittenberg
A soldier prays in the Wittenberg Minster. He wants revenge for his sister Gretchen, who was violated by Faust and who died out of desperation. Faust wishes the man dead. Then Mephistopheles approaches the soldier from behind and predicts his death. More soldiers break into the church and kill the praying soldier as the alleged murderer of their captain.
First picture
The ducal park of Parma
The Duke and Duchess of Parma celebrate their wedding. Faust, who appears as the attraction of the festival, decides to seduce the bride. The Duchess is fascinated by Faust, who is not like any of the men in her company. She leaves everything behind and follows him.
Second picture
Bar in Wittenberg
Faust tries to convey his insights in the society of men. In doing so, he unintentionally triggers a religious dispute. When asked about his stories of women, he remembers the affair with the Duchess, “the most beautiful of all women who loved me”. Mephistopheles enters and reports that the Duchess was buried. He gives Faust to her dead child. Mephistopheles wants to distract Faust with the image of the Trojan Helena, but Faust's attempt to grasp the ideal of female beauty remains an impotent evocation. The three students from Krakow ask for the book back, but Faust destroyed it. The students announce that he will die “before midnight”.
Last picture
Street in Wittenberg
The night watchman makes his rounds. It struck ten. Faust's former assistant Wagner makes a career as a university lecturer. His students congratulate themselves and then make themselves comfortable until they are driven away by the night watchman. Faust wanders through his own house as a stranger. In the hour of his death he tries in vain to "reconcile himself to his sick heart". Faust recognizes the Duchess of Parma in a beggar woman. She hands him the dead child: "For the third time I'm giving it to you." Then Gretchen's brother appears. In order to free himself from the phantoms of his guilt, Faust tries to pray, but he cannot find any words. The night watchman discovers the collapsed man: "Should this man have an accident?"
epilogue
The poet steps in front of the curtain again and says that every viewer should draw something meaningful for himself from the action on the stage.
Instrumentation
The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:
- Woodwinds : three flutes (3rd also piccolo ), two oboes (2nd also english horn ), two clarinets , bass clarinet , three bassoons (3rd also contrabassoon)
- Brass : five horns , three trumpets , three trombones , tuba
- Timpani , percussion (four players): triangle , drum , military drum, cymbal , tam-tam , xylophone , bass drum , glockenspiel
- Celesta , organ
- two harps
- Strings
- Incidental music: two horns, six trumpets, two trombones, timpani, three church bells (in c, f and g), small drums, thunder machine, violin , viola , violoncello
Work history
Origin and premiere
In 1910 Busoni dealt with the fist material for the first time , but it took about four years before he decided to use this material for an opera. In December 1914, he wrote the text for his work within a few days.
The composition lasted from 1916 until his death. Busoni made use of his own repertoire. The work, however, remained unfinished: the music for Helena's apparition, which Busoni could not find in 1922, was missing. This music should also be used for the final scene, which is therefore also missing; the score breaks off after the 451st bar of the last picture (at the words "O pray, pray! Where, where are the words? They dance through the brain like magic formulas.").
When Ferruccio Busoni died on July 27, 1924, the general director of the Saxon State Theaters , Alfred Reucker , had already scheduled the play for the 1924/25 season. In order to make the performance possible, the Busoni student Philipp Jarnach, under time pressure, created a final version in E flat minor in which several lines of text have been deleted. The first performance took place on May 21, 1925 under the direction of Fritz Busch with Robert Burg as Faust and Meta Seinemeyer .
In 1977 the English musicologist and conductor Antony Beaumont came across two sheet music in the Berlin State Library that Busoni's estate administrator had used as wrapping paper for the Faust sketches. This documented the re-use of the music from the Helena scene from the second picture and the hopeful ending in C major planned by Busoni. On this basis, Beaumont created a new reconstruction with the complete final monologue. This version was first performed on April 2, 1985 in Bologna.
Performances
- 1954 Berlin : with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau , equipped by Caspar Neher .
- 1985 Bologna : a production by Werner Herzog , premiere of the Beaumont version.
- 1991 Leipzig : a production by Willy Decker , furnished by Götz Fischer .
- 1999 Salzburg : as part of the Salzburg Festival in a production by Peter Mussbach.
- 2005 Stuttgart : a production initially conceived for San Francisco , but newly developed for Stuttgart by Jossi Wieler , Sergio Morabito and Anna Viebrock , which was selected for the 2005 performance in Germany.
- 2006 Zurich : a production by Klaus Michael Grüber , which was also released on DVD; Jarnach version.
- 2008 Munich: Bavarian State Opera as part of the Munich Opera Festival
- 2017 Dresden: as part of a Faust cycle in the Semperoper, staged by Keith Warner , conducted by Tomas Netopil; Beaumont version.
Recordings
A recording of the Zurich production by Klaus Michael Grüber was published on DVD and Blu-ray Disc .
literature
- Susanne Fontaine: Busoni's “Doctor Faust” and the Aesthetics of the Wonderful , Kassel: Bärenreiter 1988
- Rolf Fath (ed.): Reclam's opera guide . 38th, extended edition, Reclam, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-15-010638-9
- Chocolate without sugar . Interview with Slavoj Žižek about Busoni's opera on the occasion of the opening speech at the Munich Opera Festival. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung No. 149, 28./29. June 2008, p. 14.
Web links
- Libretto on opera.stanford.edu
- Plot and libretto by Doctor Faust (Busoni) on Opera-Guide landing page due to URL change currently not available
- Materials about the opera on the Ferruccio Busoni website
Individual evidence
- ^ Paul op de Coul: Doctor Faust. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater . Volume 1: Works. Abbatini - Donizetti. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-492-02411-4 , pp. 477-480.
- ^ Juliane Schunke: A Faust opera for Dresden. In: Program for the production of Doctor Faust . Saxon State Theater, 2017
- ^ Press review Ferruccio Busoni: Doctor Faust . Retrieved April 1, 2014.
- ↑ Busoni: Doctor Faust [DVD Video] - Thomas Hampson at Allmusic (English). Retrieved May 6, 2015.