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The Devil’s pleasures
Chorus pro Musica resurrects Mefistofele, plus the Pops kicks it into gear
BY DAVID WEININGER

Opening-night debacles are routine in classical music. Mahler’s Fourth Symphony and Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps are two of the many seminal works to have elicited boos and catcalls; Sacre even sparked fistfights on the occasion of its May 29, 1913, debut. One piece not often mentioned with these two is the sole completed musical work by Arrigo Boito, Mefistofele, whose premiere on March 5, 1868, was equally inauspicious. Only the prologue of Boito’s opera was well received; the four acts and epilogue that followed drew increasing contempt from that part of the Milanese audience that condescended to stay (the opera didn’t end till well after midnight.

Unlike the Fourth and Sacre, however, Mefistofele would not eventually be recognized as a masterpiece years ahead of its time, and neither would its creator posthumously attain the fame he sought as a composer. Most of Boito’s lasting work was as a librettist; had he not composed Mefistofele, he would be remembered solely for writing the texts of such Verdi masterpieces as Otello, Falstaff and Simon Boccanegra. Born in 1842, he was an undistinguished student at the Milan Conservatory, criticized, according to one source, for his "unnatural and artificial tastes in harmony." His compositional aspirations undimmed, he assembled his own libretto from Goethe’s Faust and worked on the music throughout the 1860s. Boito withdrew the opera after its disastrous opening, removing the passages that had generated the most opposition and giving the work its final form.

Your first listen to Mefistofele (on one of the few available recordings) might lead you to think that the La Scala audience was right. Some of the music seems coarse. The prologue — in which the Devil taunts God while on a visit to Heaven — opens with an attention-grabbing fanfare and ends with a rapturously loud hymn to God’s glory. It’s exhausting — and that’s just the prologue. (The music reappears even more uninhibitedly in the epilogue.) There is at least one splendid dramatic scene where Faust tries to rescue Margherita from prison before her execution. But many of the other scenes are repetitive, and many commentators have criticized Boito’s difficulty in developing his somewhat thin musical ideas.

Undeterred, Chorus pro Musica is reviving Mefistofele for its annual concert opera performance, giving us our first opportunity to hear it in Boston in 20 years. Disputing the dominant view of this problem child, CpM director Jeffrey Rink calls Boito "one of the great intellects of the 19th century" and points out that in composing Mefistofele, he aimed to write "a new kind of Italian opera that would not rely on recitatives and arias but rather would be an organically flowing compositional and dramatic form." Admitting that the prologue and epilogue are "over the top," Rink maintains that among all the operatic settings of Goethe’s masterpiece, Boito’s is "the closest to the original story, and its harmonic and rhythmic development were unprecedented in the Italian repertoire."

Among his reasons for wanting to do the opera, Rink cites his own experience singing in the New York City Opera Chorus for a production that featured a powerful cast including Norman Treigle, John Alexander, and Carol Vaness. Indeed, the large choral part — in which the singers have to play everything from a holy chorus mysticus to witches — is for Rink another selling point. Finally, he says, "I believe in it."

Chorus pro Musica presents Boito’s Mefistofele on Sunday May 23 at 3 p.m. at Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street in Boston. Tickets are $30 to $60; call (617) 267-7442.

HERE’S GEORGE. A scant four days after the BSO finishes its season, the orchestra’s alter ego, the Boston Pops, begins its run of inventive light fare. After an opening-night concert featuring Art Garfunkel and 14-year-old violinist Eugene Ugorski, the Pops gets down to serious business (so to speak) with four concerts of music by the Godfather of Pops: George Gershwin. Pianist Michael Chertock joins Keith Lockhart and company for the Piano Concerto in F; the proceedings also include An American in Paris and selections from Girl Crazy. Performances are March 12 through 15 at 8 p.m. at Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, and tickets are $16 to $69; call (617) 266-1200.


Issue Date: May 7 - 13, 2004
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