Jonas Kaufmann was both vocally miscast in Gounod’s Faust and not in his best voice at the performance I saw earlier this month at the Met. The same could be said for Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite. Only René Pape as Méphistophélès came through unimpaired, sounding as fine here as he had in 2005, when he last sang the role at the Met.
Back then Pape was starring in a new Met Faust, just as he did this season. Did the Met in 2011 need a new Faust? No, it really didn’t, and in fact, the 2005 Andrei Serban production was a lot more true to the bourgeois heart of this most bourgeois of operas.
In act 3 of Des McAnuff’s current production, when Faust is wooing Marguerite, Kaufmann drifts in and out of view non-sequitorially, sort of like Arte Johnson on Laugh In carrying a potted plant. Frustrated at Marguerite’s elusiveness, he looks out at the audience and shrugs like a frustrated teen who didn’t get to first base. And not once—but repeatedly, so much so that a callow trivializing became additonally obnoxious by repetition. Forget the possiblility of any steady momentum of lover’s rapture from taking hold.
And no, the entire production was not consistently New Vaudeville either.
Six weeks ago at Carnegie Hall, in a concert, minimally-staged performance of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur given by the Opera Orchestra of New York, Kaufmann’s dramatic and vocal impact was immeasurably brighter. More about this Adriana in a bit.