There is a similar problem with the Siébel of Juliette Mars, who brings to the part a roomy, loosened, and decidedly feminine mezzo-soprano. While the role has over the past seventy-five years graduated from the formerly common contralto category to the Modern Mezzo of pants-role configuration, it’s hard to hear the character in this sort of lush tone. I don’t know what the new Bärenreiter critical score (Paul Prévost, ed.) says, but I’ve never seen a Faust score that did not designate Siébel as “soprano.” Ingrid Perruche, the Marthe, has a voice perfectly capable of the part, and sings with spirit.

Benjamin Bernheim, a young tenor who has attracted favorable notice and already has an aria CD on the market (which I haven’t heard), is the Faust. As Dratwicki notes, he has a more youthful sound than that of most tenors who take on the role. That in itself is not a problem, save in the opening scene. He’s what I’d call promising. The vocalism is clean, precisely pitched, consistent in vibrato and, except for a few croony softer phrases, planted on a consistent legato line. His voice turns without incident through the passaggio, and has easy command of the range (the top C in “Salut, demeure” is even taken in a genuine, no-fakery mezza-voce). However, from beginning to end, there’s not a speck of passion, of emotional involvement, to be heard. Let’s not even speak of “character”—few artists locate anything of that description in this role. But feeling? There’s quite a lot of that, and of an overt romantic sort. Bernheim has not yet encountered it.

The Méphistophélès is Andrew Foster-Williams. Once again Dratwicki has an explanation: we’re shooting for the “theatrical specificity of the baryton-basse de caractère that was the glory of the Opéra-Comique and Théâtre-Lyrique in the 1860s.” Well, I wasn’t there, but I’m all for what I imagine that to have been, namely, a lean, limber instrument of keen point and myriad insinuative colors, of lighter weight than those of the international grand opera stars of the last century. Foster-Williams passes the welterweight weigh-in handily enough, and though his character baritone is somewhat limited at both ends of the required compass, makes his way honorably through this choicest of bass-baritone roles. The trouble is that his voice, though never distorted or overblown, is best described as “not unattractive.” It has little prismatic span, so his intelligent efforts at providing the desired qualities are only indications. The Valentin, Jean-Sébastien Bou, has a warm, middleweight baritone that is sufficient for the role as here written, and sings through it in straightforward fashion—no surprises, good or bad.

Do any of these principals make up any lost ground by drawing us in with their spoken dialogue? One, I think: Mars, the Siébel. She sounds like an actress, and engages the ear with her predicament. Bernheim is a dud, bringing to his lines nothing but clear speech. Gens, Foster-Williams, and Bou all work with understanding, and impress as “doing well for singers.” And the two whose parts have gained the most in this version, Perruche as Marthe and Anas Séguin as Wagner? I don’t doubt both are talented. But I believe they have been ill-directed and ill-recorded. In quest of boisterousness, Séguin bellows through his now quite prominent role. Perruche certainly understands her character and the situations she finds herself in, and demonstrates this at an energy level calibrated to the Royal Albert Hall or the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. They are recorded much too close-up, so that the effect on us is of being hectored. And this is a part of what I hear as a quite unpleasant job of recording, with lots of empty-hall echo and an edge on the sound that reminded me of some of the more wayward early efforts at digital recording, the kind that sent us back to analog versions. Hard to understand.