“The Real was painful, and the Ideal was a dream,” laments Faust in Italian composer Arrigo Boito’s version of the legendary tale by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera has opened its new season—late in the year, as Italian theaters tend to do—with a rare new production of Boito’s only completed opera, which bears the name not of the disappointed medieval German academician who craves youth, but of his devil tempter. Mefistofele once held a prime position in the repertoire, but productions have become infrequent, with only one other incarnation in Rome’s roster since the 1950s. After premiering in 2010, that solitary recent effort was never revived. It has now been succeeded by Australian director Simon Stone’s new production, which aspires to a minimalist interpretation.
Mefistofele’s major challenge is that it is fundamentally a cerebral opera. Boito, an atheist who graduated from Milan’s conservatory in 1861, was reacting not only against his own country’s Romantic traditions (he infamously dismissed Giuseppe Verdi’s iconic corpus of opera as “slime”) but specifically against the French composer Charles Gounod’s Faust. Gounod’s opera is a much more sentimental version of the tale; it premiered just two years before Boito’s graduation and has remained internationally popular ever since. Boito thought Gounod’s opera far too saccharine to capture the legend’s true essence. His devil would be different—a thoroughly modern creature who shared the nihilistic sensibilities of the 1860s, as Romanticism yielded to Realism and the young composers of Boito’s generation began to search for social utility rather than evocative dreams. If Gounod’s Méphistophélès is a hissable villain of performative melodrama, Boito’s Mefistofele is a witty and well informed opponent who contemplates meaning in a rapidly changing world. Defying God and the Heavenly Hosts, his monologues speak of atomic theory and evolution as he considers our world’s small place in the vast, observable cosmos. As a type, he is a forerunner of Iago (years later, Boito would, despite his differences with Verdi, produce the libretto for Otello)—a character embellished beyond his Shakespearean dimensions into a keen philosopher who also makes choice comments about the origins of man and the nature of the universe.
The Italian public was unreceptive to Boito’s sensibilities when Mefistofele premiered under his baton in Rome in 1868. “He only succeeds in being strange,” was Verdi’s verdict. In addition to the opera’s modern depiction of the title character, Boito’s score, set to a libretto of his own composition and taken directly from Goethe’s more sentential lines, was brassy and Wagnerian in a country that had yet to hear any of Wagner’s operas and had little appreciation for his musical innovations. Boito’s motivic elements carry one scene into the next with few traditional set pieces beyond Mefistofele’s free-verse monologues, which recall those of Wagner’s early demons.
Mefistofele was also Wagnerian in length, sprawling over five acts with a prologue. The widely derided premiere lasted until after midnight. The second performance was given over two evenings. After that, Boito withdrew the work for revision. Only seven years later, in Bologna, where Italy had seen its first Wagner opera, Lohengrin, in 1871, did a much reduced work find success with audiences whose tastes had begun to pivot toward the German master. The new version, which is more or less what we see today (Boito made minor revisions through 1881), is about one-third shorter, with some expository scenes cut and Faust rewritten as a tenor part instead of the less appealing baritone of the original. Mefistofele dominates the action. Faust’s fate is less of his own making than the product of a Job-like bet between the devil and his heavenly opponent. His romancing of the unfortunate Margarita is reduced to one scene, and the consequences, which she merely describes in her mad scene-style aria “L’altra notte in fondo al mare,” seem more incidental than plot-turning. She is saved in the end, and intercedes to save Faust, who chants the Lord’s Prayer to a welcoming chorus of angels as Mefistofele loses his power.
Stone’s setting veered toward a white-space minimalism. In Mel Page’s sets, scenes involving the supernatural—both the divine heavenly setting and the exuberant scene of the witch’s sabbath—unfold within an enclosed box of white walls, white costumes, and white light. Mefistofele intrudes on this perfection in silvery suits and enjoys the ability to redden the atmosphere with a diabolical gesture. The earthy scenes project a striking simplicity in an age of lost sentimentality.
Faust’s seduction of Margarita takes place in one of those unhygienic bins of bouncing balls in which millennials like to play. Mefistofele helps by distracting her faithful maid Marta, who sprays the devil with Veuve Clicquot as they frolic nearby. Margarita’s prison cell is a space of gray confinement with a large television screen that broadcasts her crimes: her inadvertent poisoning of her mother with a sleeping potion that Faust had given her, and the murder of their infant child. Soldiers in modern Italian army uniforms escort her about and also capture the diversionary scene in which Mefistofele removes a perturbed Faust to the court of Helen of Troy in order to find joy in the “classical” sabbath. Stone’s minimalism may not have been completely misplaced, but lengthy scene changes on top of two intermissions did cause the evening to drag to nearly four hours.
The musical effort was superb. Michele Mariotti, Rome’s music director since last year, led a loud performance that relied heavily on his orchestra’s excellent horn section and delivered Boito’s score with romance and spirituality. Mefistofele’s choruses are among the repertoire’s most soaring, despite the composer’s atheism, and chorus master Ciro Visco led them splendidly.
The Canadian-American bass John Relyea truly found his own in the title part, having progressed from a higher baritone timbre earlier in his career to the black, charcoal sound that Boito’s master of darkness needs to flourish in his rejection of all that is. This was a career-making performance and Rome was fortunate to have this talented and still relatively youthful singer in the part. The young American tenor Joshua Guerrero betrayed a bit of pinch as Faust, but one should remember that it was originally a baritone role rewritten for tenor and therefore poses significant challenges to any singer taking it on. In all its main features, however, his was a fine performance. Maria Agresta sang superbly as Margarita. Her lilting soprano has thickened into a darker palette and allowed her to plumb the depths of her character’s despair.
In our nihilistic age, Mefistofele may be primed for a comeback. New York and San Francisco have seen notable revivals in the past decade. Rome’s choice to open its new season with Boito’s opera—an event that was broadcast nationally and made available for streaming—was a strong step continuing in that direction. Venice’s Teatro La Fenice will also feature it this season, with Agresta reprising the role of Margarita.
