Besides the entire opening scene, the Invocation, the “Le veau d’or” and the “Vous qui faites l’endormie,” the surviving passages of this Faust comprise nearly five minutes of the Kermesse (from Méphistophélès’ “Nous nous retrouverons, mes amis” into the waltz, but stopping short just at the edge of Faust’s first lines to Marguerite), the “Salut, demeure,” and Siébel’s “Faites-lui mes aveux.” One thing that emerges is that Goossens sounds like a great operatic conductor, and the Covent Garden band of 1928 like a real opera orchestra. It’s not only that Goossens takes Chaliapin’s most extreme Improvements in full “Right, that’s how it goes” stride, or swings into the waltz with an irresistible yet natural-sounding pulse, but that he seems to have sustained throughout the kind of dramatic bonding with his soloists that he and Hislop establish at the outset. The tenor aria is eloquently phrased, each section settled and its still-point moment observed before a new beat picks up (and Hislop gets off a vibrant high C, even if he does resort to the gimmick of launching it by means of rendering “pré-SEN-ce” as “pré-HEN-ce“).

Equally interesting to me in this same respect is Siébel’s song. Even when well sung and perkily acted (and for some reason perkiness always substitutes for the nervous anxiety that Siébel has to be feeling—allegretto agitato, says the marking), this scene seldom registers as more than an incidental song with its little pitter-patter of applause before the act really begins. It’s a set of couplets that carry the action of the song, interrupted by passages of recitative that constitute its obstacle—similar in structure to Marguerite’s Roi de Thulé ballad, though very different in mood. Several tempo changes are marked, but except for a “rit.” over the concluding “un doux baiser,” no easements within them. And a number of dynamic markings are present, including gradual crescendos for the build-ups in each verse—but no dynamic instructions to go with them. But as rendered, the crescendos are also quite urgent accellerandos, the following easings of loudness also ritardandos with the intervals down from the arcs of phrases portamentoed; the recitative sections are timed to the acting necessities. (Example: the little stopped moment after the mournful “toucher une fleur,” filled by the staccato woodwind figure—slowed, isolated, while Siébel searches for a solution—then, like a snap of the fingers, the inspiration to revive the faded flower by dipping a hand in holy water, and a very quick “Si je trempais,” etc.)^(I)