The Damnation Of Faust - continued

It’s hard to describe the blur of frenetic activity that takes place next. One moment you’re singing a lullaby, stoned on some imaginary substance you’ve inhaled from a plastic bag, picking your elegantly dressed lady companion up off the floor and hanging her over the edge of the box. Then suddenly with your vocal cut-off instead of falling asleep you’re dashing out of the box and ripping your clothes off as you stumble down a dark staircase toward your next offstage appointment with yet another frenzied costume change. In record time you’re staggering up a different staircase back onto the stage dressed as a goofy student. On the main deck you hop around for a small eternity gasping for air between phrases sung in a state of oxygen deficit as you ridicule and chase a group of soldiers, all the while desperately trying to keep an eye on the conductor in that dim little monitor next to the spotlight.

Since you can’t really see or hear anything in the noise and confusion, to stay in tempo you’re forced to rely on the Helen Keller choral method of counting the beats from the thud of the marching soldier’s footfalls that you feel through the stage floor. Then, giddy, you chase the soldiers off the stage back down the steps to the dressers for your return to tuxedo and the over-crowded box. There, blue-faced and perspiring, you mock Marguerite for a short while before dashing away again to sing an off-stage chorus, followed by a brief appearance in the stage pit for the ride to hell. Horrified by a glimpse into the inferno (which you don’t even have time to see) you flee the pit, grab a pair of goggles, crawl up yet another dark flight of stairs and re-enter blindly into the bright heavenly bliss of ultimate redemption, singing the looooong, glorious phrases with not even a hint of underlying acute hypoxia. The Faustian legend comes to its final curtain amid cheers from the audience and gasps from the chorus.

There you have it. Another light-hearted Germanic romp from the people who brought you psychoanalysis. Berlioz…Nudity…Sex…Operobics…What’s not to like?

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