Still, there is the problem of how all these things are to be theatrically represented in a way that compels “us” to suspend our disbelief, and that includes finding an inclusive interpretation of Marguerite’s salvation, or, if you prefer, redemption. Since I was snagged by Faust‘s magic at an early age and have been working on my own scenario ever since, I’ve got that solved for myself.^(I)  But our directors and designers wallow in willful helplessness, and our singers haven’t sufficient force of voice, style, or personality to seize our attention at the crucial junctures. Which brings us to March 20, 1937—forty years along from Henderson’s bons mots—at that same Metropolitan Opera House.

For readers habituated to 80-year-old broadcasts, I can say that the sonics of this release are excellent for the date. (As usual with Immortal Performances, Richard Caniell details for us the problems of pitch, dynamics, and noise involved in transferring and restoring the sound from NBC’s transcription discs, and his decisions about when to intervene and when not.) For those not so acclimated, I must note that they won’t be listening to luxurious modern studio sound, or even the sound of the 1940 performance, which, as heard on the Naxos release, is the best I know of any of the Met broadcasts from the ’30s to the mid-’40s. (That performance was also restored by Caniell.) Here, some choral and orchestral passages are still muddy or crunchy, and in a few sequences, including the concluding minutes of the Garden Scene, there’s an unpleasant rim around the voices. But to all: listen on through—it’s well worth it.

It should also be understood that this performance observes the theatre cuts that had by then become standard at the Met (and in most Stateside productions): there is no Act IV Marguerite/Siébel scene (No. 12, with entr’acte and recit.) and no version of Walpurgis, with or without ballet; there are also several internal cuts, which I’ll touch on later. As grand operas go, this all makes for a compact show, which after the opening scene is tightly focused on the downfall and redemption of the heroine. It can play well, but it also aggravates a dramaturgical divide in the piece, almost like the POV switcheroo that has occasioned so much needless commentary on Die Zauberflöte. For Faust starts out to be about Faust and his relationship to his demon, en route to some destiny that is never resolved owing to the plot’s self-containment within the Gretchen episode of the play. The Walpurgis scene at least makes a gesture toward keeping our male protagonist in view and getting his plot back on track, though it’s left dangling again by the finale. So we feel its absence here. With these caveats in mind, on to the performance.