The Canadian Opera Company’s new production of Gounod’s Faust, which opened on Friday at the Four Seasons Centre, is the first main stage show created at the COC since Joel Ivany’s Hänsel und Gretel in 2020.  It’s worth the wait!

Amy Lane’s production scores by not taking itself too seriously.  Faust is high kitsch with a cloying combination of bourgeois sentimentality and Catholic religiosity.  Lane deals with this by embracing the kitsch.  To give just a few examples, Méphistophélès, dapper in top hat, tails and cane, is accompanied everywhere by two Sally Bowles clones (Sierra Richardson as Lucie and Tina Desroches as Bubbs), who dance and mime.  At perhaps the funniest point in the opera, the soldier’s chorus in Act 3, we find them high kicking with the gentlemen of the chorus in a scene that looks like something from Spamalot with French soldiers instead of knights.  To cap it all Marguerite’s ascension to heaven is facilitated by a female dancer in white (purest Samite?) top hat and tails dissing Méphistophélès from high on a spiral staircase shaped like a twisted spine.

Which takes us to the more serious side of the production, and there is one!  Besides the kitsch, Faust is, in a particular sense, organic.  It deals with aging, love, lust, violent death, poison, murder, suicide and execution.  One could say all the things that cause the dissolution of the body.  This is strongly suggested by the sets (Emma Ryott, who also did the excellent costumes) where trees and a staircase, backed up by projections, evoke pulmonary blood vessels and a twisted spinal column.  Add to that Charlie Morgan Jones’ spectacular lighting plot which emphasises both shifts in emotion and transitions from the realistic to the imaginary and the overall result is a rich visual language that integrates the deadly serious and the humorous, the worldly and the unworldly.

Another element worthy of note is the use of dance; not always the COC’s strong suit.  Here it’s incorporated to excellent effect with some fine choreography from Tim Claydon.  There are many, many places where it makes an impact; Walpurgis Nacht for exampe, but perhaps the most interesting and one of the most effective examples is in the jewel scene.  Here the casket is represented by two “gold” dancers dancing in classical fashion and adorning Marguerite with her new found finery.

The casting works well too with the concept.  Kyle Ketelsen is perfect as this Méphistophélès.  He;’s not over the top but there’s a suitably sardonic cast to both his singing and his movement.  All this reinforced by an absolutely solid singing performance.  Our Faust, Long Long, is ardent and has terrific top notes and if he’s not the world’s best in either the French diction or acting departments he knocks the music out of the park.  Marguerite is the very sympathetic Guanqun Yu.  She’s got a very beautiful voice and enough heft.  She grows into the part and by the end we have a Marguerite we can both love and pity.

Then there’s the Valentin of Szymon Mechllński.  He’s a big man with a huge voice and really makes an impact.  Korin Thomas-Smith has a brief moment to display his comic gifts as Wagner and Megan Latham makes the most of her brief cameo as a tea lady Marthe.  Which leaves Alex Hetherington in, I think, her biggest role to date at the COC, as Siebel.  She sings and acts with great confidence and is really rather lovely.  I look forward to seeing what she does next.

The COC chorus was on terrific form; especially the men, and were possibly even better than in Nabucco.  Directors should give this lot more to do in the acting department.  They always rise to the challenge!  The orchestra sounded terrific too and Johannes Debus ensured they made the most of the memorable tunes.  All in all, fine music making.

To my mind, this Faust is the COC at its best.  Musical values are always pretty good but it’s much less fun when they are married to some tired old production from the most boring houses in the USA.  It’s a question of money I suppose but when the COC gets a chance to create its own drama or, second best, work with a world class director’s production the results are usually excellent.  There was something in the Neef era slogan “Home to the Best” that needs to be revived.

Gounod’s Faust continues at the Four Seasons centre until November 2nd.

Photo credits: Michael Cooper