The Damnation of Faust
Barbican
Rigoletto
ENO
Berlioz called La Damnation de Faust ‘an opera without decor or costumes’, which is what I quite often wish all operas were. But as David Cairns writes in his characteristically illuminating but tendentious programme notes, ‘It is an opera of the mind’s eye performed on an ideal stage of the imagination; we see it more vividly than any visual medium could depict it, except the cinema (which it at times anticipates).’
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