Review: A matinee of Wolf Trap Opera’s “Faust” didn’t feel all that far removed from the muggy afternoon beyond the sturdy walls of the Barns, set in the deep heat of fin de siècle New Orleans. It offers a concentrated new take on Charles Gounod’s classic.
But director Alison Moritz’s smartly refined production of Charles Gounod’s 1859 mainstay proved immediately transportive, casting the opera in an alluring new light and concentrating its grandeur into a potent potion.
This “Faust” — the tale of an aging scholar who strikes a deal with the devil for another taste of youth — had its own fateful bargain to strike: For the cozy purposes of the 382-seat Barns and its modest pit, conductor Geoffrey McDonald led his lean 26-piece orchestra in a reduced orchestration of the opera by Francis Griffin.
McDonald handled his short staff ably and energetically, filling in gaps of anticipated intensity and approximating vacancies of scale wherever he reasonably could, and otherwise offering a sensitive, responsive and clearly endeared reading of the score. — not to mention the intimacy of the space raises the stakes on those singers to act.
Fortunately, all aspects were in order on Sunday: Moritz’s vision is graced by a keenly cast ensemble of talented singers, well-complemented by a chorus of Wolf Trap studio artists, its ranks effervescently present and dynamically sound. made a forceful and compassionate Dr. Faust, his “Rien! En vain j’interroge” a rending introduction of a man broken by longing and jonesing for poison.
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