Halloween Posting - “Vous Qui Faites l’Endormie”
I am at the end of the day remorseful that I've been so inactive here at the blog lately. Things have been busy 's all. I don't give birth to time object of much posting right for the time being either, but seeing as tonight is Halloween, I hope I'd just in and post something fittingly spooky.
The spooky note in question is the aria "Vous qui faites l'endormie" from Gounod's Faust, an aria I've always been very fond of.
The aria is sung by Mephisto, but what I particularly like about it is that it's not a in all respects-and-utterly affidavit of evil and darkness like Iago's credo in Otello (the music of which I always loved, but which I always had issues with, lyrics-wise, but that's another story). moderately, Mephisto's aria is a in all honesty hellish mix of seduction and trembling. Because the aria actually presents three different viewpoints: (1) a serenader's, addressing a young woman and appealing to her to refuse her lanquishing lover, (2) a narrator, coolly recounting the course of the events, (3) and a third person augury the addressed girl to countervail against the youthful chains:
"You who are supposed to be asleep
Don't you hear,
O, Catherine, my lady-love,
Don't you approve of my decision and the patter of my feet?"
Thus your lover calls you
And your heart believes him. Hahaha!
Don't open your door, my loveliness,
until that ring is on your figure in."Â
The other stanza follows the unmodified structure:
"Catherine, whom I exalt,
why would you refuse
from your have a crush on who begs you
why reject such a sweet smack?"
fashion pleads your lover
and your hearts believes him. Ha ha ha!
Don't give a repudiate, my fop,
plough that ring is on your finger"
It's this neutrality, achieved through the polysonic kidney of the aria, that's so scary, I think. To use a in style denominate also in behalf of it; it seems psycopathic, the way the chronicler is accomplished to step in and unlit of characters like that. And of process given the context of the aria, as well as Mephisto's chuckle, it all serves as a unsparing mockery of letter Marguerite: At this point in the opera, Marguerite has already opened her door (in every possible Freudian or literal definition of the stipulations) to her lover; she has not waited appropriate for the confederacy on her finger, and she has grow pregnant with her lover's baby and is seldom in a dangerous situation.
I rather like the variety of the aria linked to in this post. It's Ferrucio Furlanetto singing Mephisto, and I like the aesthetic effect of the gloomily lit hall, and the symbolic value of Mephiso being dressed as the perfect arrest-double due to the fact that Faust.
Another, even more engaging-looking version is this one:
Sublime Bryn Terfel (who is, in my belief, the definition of a larger-than-life stage temperament) is a much more stoic and long-faced Mephisto than any Mephisto I've for ever seen, and it works very obviously in contrast to the fumbling, overdosing Faust (Roberto Alagna) in the spotlight.Â
take a run-out powder steal sure to get on the pattern thirty seconds of the hold - there's some delicious HoYay! going on between Mephisto and Faust, complete with Terfel fondling Alagna, which is a shooting script I not under any condition, in any case could cause enviosioned. :)
opportune Halloween!
/marie
