A Book of Operas: Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their MusicKrehbiel, Henry Edward
History
A Book of Operas: Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music
Krehbiel, Henry Edward
Operas -- Stories, plots, etc.
Lo, here is the world!
A bright sphere rising,
Setting, whirling, glancing,
Round the sun in circles dancing;
Trembling, toiling,
Yielding, spoiling,
Want and plenty by turn enfold it--
This world, behold it!
On its surface, by time abraded,
Dwelleth a vile race, defiled, degraded;
Abject, haughty,
Cunning, naughty,
Carrying war and desolation
From the top to the foundation
Of creation.
For them Satan has no being;
They scorn with laughter
A hell hereafter,
And heavenly glory
As idle story.
Powers eternal! I'll join their laugh infernal
Thinking o'er their deeds diurnal. Ha! Ha!
Behold the world!
He dashes the globe to pieces on the ground and thereby sets the
witches to dancing. To the antics of the vile crew Faust gives no
heed; his eyes are fixed upon a vision of Margherita, her feet in
fetters, her body emaciated, and a crimson line encircling her
throat. His love has come under the headsman's axe! In the Ride to
Hell, which concludes Berlioz's "Damnation de Faust," the infernal
horsemen are greeted with shouts in a language which the mystical
Swedenborg says is the speech of the lower regions. Boito also uses
an infernal vocabulary. His witches screech "Saboé har Sabbah!" on
the authority of Le Loyer's "Les Spectres."
From the bestiality of the Brocken we are plunged at the beginning
of the third act into the pathos of Margherita's death. The episode
follows the lines laid down by Barbier and Carré in their paraphrase
of Goethe, except that for the sake of the beautiful music of the
duet (which Boito borrowed from his unfinished "Ero e Leandro"), we
learn that Margherita had drowned her child. Faust urges her to fly,
but her poor mind is all awry. She recalls the scene of their first
meeting and of the love-making in Dame Martha's garden, and the
earlier music returns, as it does in Gounod's score, and as it was
bound to do. At the end she draws back in horror from Faust, after
uttering a prayer above the music of the celestial choir, just as
the executioner appears. Mefistofele pronounces her damned, but
voices from on high proclaim her salvation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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