David McVicar's spectacular 2004 production of Gounod’s Faust, featuring a divine cast of opera’s superstars: Roberto Alagna, Angela Gheorghiu, Bryn Terfel, Simon Keenlyside and Sophie Koch.
McVicar is one of the most innovative and in-demand directors, and his lush, haunting realised vision of Faust received glorious praise. The production revels in a gothic, seamy Second French Empire setting, with the Act V ballet “haunting the imagination long after” (The Independent).
“This is opera at its grandest and best” The Wall Street Journal
January 2011
*****
“Alagna depicts Faust's transition from Gounod-like ancient to cartwheeling young boulevardier and drug-addled Baudelairean decadent with energy and elegant phrasing...[Terfel] suggests the constant predatory menace beneath the musketeer panache with a curious dignity...[Pappano's] theatrical vigour banishes any trace of Gallic langour, a thoroughly un-fustian Faust.”
2011 edition
“surely one of the finest achievements of DVD so far...Alagna dominates vocally in the name-role with a powerful heady lyricism...Gheorghiu sings gloriously as a delightful Marguerite, but the action is underlined by the splendidly bold panache of Bryn Terfel's Mephistopheles”
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