INTERVIEW: ‘Faust’ may be a classic, but this version speaks to 2025
Photo: Faust, produced by Heartbeat Opera, continues through May 25. Photo courtesy of Heartbeat / Provided by Aleba & Co. with permission.
Heartbeat Opera’s new adaptation of Faust continues through Sunday, May 25, at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York City. The show, with music by Charles Gounod, features an original libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. Together, this trio created a classic work for the stage, but director Sara Holdren and her team have updated the story to modern times and are offering comments on society in 2025.
Holdren co-adapted the piece with Jacob Ashworth, who serves as music director, conducts and plays violin. Ashworth obviously wears many hats, most prominently as artistic director of Heartbeat Opera.
“It’s very exciting; it’s a really fun one to work on,” Ashworth said in a recent phone interview. “One of the things I love, love doing as artistic director for Heartbeat is I get to meet all these directors and talk to them, people who have been on our list for a long time. Sara is actually someone who worked with us many years ago. She was an assistant director on our Carmen. I’ve known for her a while. She directed something else with me, and so she was always somebody I was interested in having direct for Heartbeat. When I talk to directors, I have no idea what piece we’re going to do, but I throw out a bunch of titles. They throw out some things that they’re interested in.”
Ashworth didn’t have Faust on his top 3, top 5 or top 10 list of operas to stage. Mostly he thought the work was too fusty and too dusty for modern-day audiences.
“It had this amazing, huge popularity in the 20th century that is so of its time,” he said. “But I guess if this piece was that popular, there must be something really extraordinary in it, and then I mentioned it to Sara. And she sort of went off on this whole exciting spin about it, and she wrote me an email three days later with all of her thoughts about the piece. And it was just, oh, this is an amazing match for this person, and so we knew from then that was what we wanted to do.”
Here’s how Holdren explains her vision for this new Faust: “In our Faust, we explore these ideas of shadow and light, of how they produce and necessitate each other, both in the characters’ deepest longings and the aesthetic of our stage world. I’m thrilled to discover what haunting shadows we can cast, and what new light we can shine, on this extraordinary opera,” she stated in an official news release.
Ashworth, who has completely come around to the majesty of this operatic work, said the story of Faust is a timeless one, and he finds it so much fun to engage with a major archetype of literature. He said the work is ripe for displacement, rereading and reinvention.
“Faust in our version doesn’t really undergo a major age change,” he said. “He just undergoes a makeover, and he goes from disgruntled college professor, rather than mad scientist doctor. And then he regains his youth in large part with better clothes and launches into this world, and this world that we find ourselves in is so incredibly modern. Everything about the libretto felt like it’s uncannily talking about American society today.”
The maestro talked about a character in the opera going to jail for “killing her baby,” and the production draws parallels to today’s movement to protect women’s reproductive rights in light of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. “So without putting too much of a nail on the head of that, it’s a resonance that I think the audience will definitely pick up on,” Ashworth said.
Heartbeat Opera, for the unbeknownst, is one of the hardest-working companies on the New York live-performance scene. Many smaller outfits will simply sing classic works with minimal props and not too many creative choices when it comes direction. Not so for Heartbeat, which prides itself on full-on productions.
“Opera is an enormous endeavor to put on, especially for a small company like ours,” Ashworth admitted. “We’re in the league of small opera companies, but within that coterie of organizations, I feel like we do pretty radically full theatrical theater. And that’s actually not true of smaller opera companies. It’s true of small theater companies. It’s off-Broadway or off-off-Broadway or off-off-off-Broadway, but in opera, it’s often that the music will carry us — and that will be enough. Everything else can be a little bit less, which doesn’t interest us at all. We find it a little bit boring, and it kind of denudes opera of all of its best aspects, which is its theatricality.”
Ashworth added: “There are so many things that have to come together to make a Heartbeat show in the end, but we’ve had some practice at it. And I feel like I’m personally, finally starting to get to the place where I can trust the process more and more every time and not have so many sleepless nights even if things aren’t perfect three weeks away from opening already — because, of course, they never are. What’s amazing is we have collaborators who are so fiercely hard-working and passionate and devoted and really throwing themselves into these projects.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Faust, produced by Heartbeat Opera, continues through Sunday, May 25, at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
