I am confident that, as with so many works of the canon, the salient reason for Faust‘s dive into the dustbin is the evident impossibility of casting it well. But its moral lesson, and the religious terms in which it is couched, seems to be a stumbling block as well. I think of two comments. One, from the director of a regional opera company and cited in an earlier post, was to the effect that Faust shouldn’t be done anymore because we no longer believe in its salvific message. The other, made some years ago by an intelligent and cultivated friend irritated by the evasions of a then-new production, was: “Faust is about the salvation of Marguerite, and anyone who has trouble with that should leave it alone.” The first comment I find obtuse. The second has to be taken seriously.

Who are the “we” of the first comment? Us seculars, I guess, assumed to include in all clued-in —an event of multiplication not a whit less miraculous than that of the loaves and fishes. And I suppose it is true that among today’s operagoers (to say nothing of today’s heady directors and designers), there are fewer who embrace in literal detail the opera’s last moments, in which Marguerite suddenly recovers her lost reason and, through fervent prayer and recognition of the man who impregnated and abandoned her as the true sinner, finds redemption and is borne aloft from her squalid cell on angels’ wings, while a Heavenly choir hymns Christ’s resurrection. How naïve can we be?

Is it not a moving thought, though, that an innocent young woman who has been led into the darkest of places can find her way back and triumph over her demons? It is, and as “Anges pur, anges radïeux” soars ever higher in a strong, shining soprano voice, why would we deny it? How naïve, I wonder, were many in the audiences of Faust’s heyday? All religious literalists? How naïve was Bernard Shaw, something of a Mephisto himself? He scoffed, but he loved Faust. True, the piece demands acceptance of other elements belonging to the Christian worldview, such as the presence of Méphistophélès incarnate, with his magical powers and vampire-like terror of the cross; sexual transgression as the Primrose Path to damnation; holy water as the restorer of dead flowers, etc. And while such elements appear in many E-19 operas, they are inescapably in our faces in this one. But for heaven’s (or Heaven’s) sake: they belong to, and are necessary conditions of, the world of the drama, not the world of “we,” and as with any stage work “we” are merely meant to visit that world, whether we embrace it in daily life or not. In the course of our visit, we might stumble into feelings aroused by that old world, and be forced to acknowledge their power. In that case, we might even have learned something of value. That is just what the “we” mentality fears, the source of its “Flight from E-19″—the discovery that, through the transcendence of art, the old view can still hold sway over us. Which would mean that it isn’t irrelevant, after all.