Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

  by   Maureen Buja  The story of Faust has captured composers’ imaginations for centuries. There was a historical figure, Johann Georg Faust (c. 1480–1540), who made the original deal with the devil at the crossroads when he exchanged his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The idea of a ‘Faustian’ pact always carries with it the idea of sacrificing good (or the spiritual) for the evils of power, knowledge, and material gain. In preferring human knowledge over divine knowledge, Faust is damned from the beginning. From 16th-century puppet plays to Goethe’s tragic figure in the 19th century, Faust is always the symbol for ‘what if’ or ‘going to the dark side’. The French composer Charles Gounod (1818–1893) met Faust in 1859. His opera, first given at the Théâtre Lyrique as an  opéra comique , i.e., an opera with dialogue, in 1859, evolved over the next decade to have recitatives added (Strasbourg 1860), scenes removed (La Scala, 1862), and da...