Your Faust

Your Faust is the French incarnation of this “choose your own adventure opera” first performed in Milan in 1969 and never before staged in France. An avant-garde piece of musical theater such as is rarely dared anymore. The actors play out the story, the singers comment like a chorus of antiquity, the music plays throughout, and the audience turns the whole thing on its head. In the libretto, Michel Butor, journeyman of the new novel, mixes literary references. In the composition, Henri Pousseur, a brother-in-arms of Boulez and Berio, imposes a music that crosses post-serial with electroacoustic, while piling up references from Monteverdi to Stockhausen.

We can see the resemblance to the archetype of the myth. There is a composer in Faust, a theater director in Méphisto, and even a pair of Marguerites! But if it’s Faust today, just imagine what limits it might be possible to push…

This open work is not just the Faust of the composer or of the librettist. In each act the spectators and technicians vote to influence the course of events. With six hours of composed music, and barely three played in any one performance, you get an idea of how many narrative branches are possible. In a vaudeville staging, between the set and the seats, we can imagine the precarious position of the performers, constantly on the lookout for the slightest veer of course in public opinion. It takes a real conductor to hold all these elements together as they are tossed about by both fate and the audience. Otherwise, we might have to ask ourselves if it isn’t Méphisto running the show!