Faust - the movie, complete

So many Fausts this year - Gounod Faust in English, Berlioz Monty Python at the ENO, Liszt A Faust Symphony Prom 15 tomorrow and from 18 Sept Gounod Faust in French with Pape, Gheorghiu, Grigolo and Hvorostovsky. Earler this year there was a Faust feat in Oxford, and last year at the Proms Schumann Manfred Symphony. (Please click on label at the right for Proms 2010 (37 posts) and Proms 2009 (43))
So above is the F W Murnau Faust from 1926. This film is a classic and set "Gothic" into the popular psyche ever since. It's as much art as the operas and sympohonies. Some of the actors became big names, like Emil Jannings, Wilhelm Dieterle and Camilla Horn. (lots on Weimar film on this site too, many full dowloads) So enjoy the movie before tomorrow's Prom 15 when Vladimir Jurowski conducts the LPO, Marco Jentsch and two choirs.

Faust Feast, Oxford

"In the basement beneath the rolling Quad of Trinity College, a scholar is preparing to offer the devil his soul in exchange for absolute power".

A major festival of Faust related plays, concerts and films take place now in Oxford. Few places could be better posed for true Faustian atmosphere - gargoyles, medieval colleges, cobbled alleyways and above all, ancient libraries, filled with arcane and ancient wisdom. And, one might add, Faust-like scholars buried in books. But some of the "nerds" that have haunted these halls have gone on to unimaginable things and often they don't have to sell their souls. Tim Berners-Lee, for example, who created the World Wide Web, who was at Queen's.

Two versions of Christopher Marlowe's Faust. One by Creation Theatre Company takes place in Blackwell's Bookshop, next to the Quad at Trinity. Imagine, the reality of a bookshop famed for its erudiite stoock, but actors wandering about. Very apt. "Ile burne my bookes!"

Another staging of Marlowe's Faust runs from 9th to 13th February in Corpus Christi College auditorium. Arthur Kincaid directs and acts as Faustus. A true town and gown production, half students, half normal locals. Interesting too, that these productions will use slightly different editions of Marlowe as well as different settings.

Goethe's Faust gets a much welcomed outing from 24th to 26th February in Queen's College Chapel with the Eglesfield Players. A modern translation, staged in a chapel, with a chorus in the cast, the production will "bring all the dramatic (and comic) potential without losing sight of its academic and religious debate" and its resemblance to Oxford life over the ages.

George Lord Byron's epic Manfred gets a reading by professional actors in New College Chapel on March 27.  Manfred of course inspired Schumann, but it's not a piece that lends itself easily to the stage, so hearing it read by people who know drama should be a good experience.

There's so much Faust-inspired music it's hard to imagine it in one concert - Mahler, Busoni, Berlioz, Gounod etc. So see what they do on 5th March at Corpus Christi. The films are Istvan Szabo's Mephisto based on the novel of Klaus Mann and Faustus a ten-minute art piece shot in Merton Chapel.  They're not showing F W Murnau's classic film Faust, but you can watch that on this site  in FULL DOWNLOAD. For more information contact the Oxford Faust Festival on email oxfordfaustfestival@gmail.com. Prices are low, and the Films are free but this is such an adventurous project, it's worth making an effort to participate.

Marschner - Der Vampyr full download

Complete download from Opera Today of  Der Vampyr the short(ish) opera  by H A Marschner (1795-1861) which has been enjoying quite a revival in the last few years. Follow THIS LINK which contains a full  recording from a live performance in Vienna in 1951, with complete original libretto. There are at least four recordings available, but this is the first. This version was created by Hans Pfitzner in the 1930's.

Marschner's Der Vampyr isn't Bram Stoker at all, whose Dracula was only written in 1897.  Marschner's vampire is based on a novel by John Polidori who was English, but of Italian descent, and a friend of Lord Byron and eventually the uncle of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The story was written in 1819, the year after Mary Shelley published Frankenstein. Did the British invent Goth culture as art in the first place? Walter Scott too inspired mid European audiences with his high Romantic glamour.

Polidori's characters are pesudo-Scottish aristocrats - Lord Ruthven, Sir Humphrey Davenant, Sir John Aubry and John and Janthe Berkley. (Not Berkeley which is more "English".) Several of them are already undead. The plot revolves around corrupting young virgins, which, given the Byron and Hellfire Club connections may be social comment as much as psychological horror story. A German language play was written based on the novel. Marschner's opera followed in 1828.

Marschner's Der Vampyr is more than a curiosity because it was so popular in its time. Marschner worked with Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden, hence the tradition of magical hi-jinks and horror that we know from Der Freischütz and Euryanthe. Der Vampyr isn't quite in that league and I can't take the idea that it's an "influence" on Wagner as wiki suggests. But Der Vampyr is fun in a kind of campy potboiler way. I know two of the recordings besides this one, but have never seen it staged - what a hoot that would be - fake aristos scamming each other, chasing pretty brides-to-be on the eve of their weddings etc. A bit racy ! Have fun and enjoy. The full F W Murnau film Nosferatu Der Vampyr (1922) is available in FULL DOWNLOAD on this site, just click on the link. this is brilliant.  Also Carl Th Dreyer's Vampyr HERE.  On BBC TV2 iPlayer until 27/12 is Werner Herzog's 1979 remake with Klaus Kinski and Isabelle Adjani which is atmospheric and well shot. See that and compare.

Faust - complete download

Not Gounod's Faust at ENO, but  F W Murnau's Faust from 1926. This is based on the Goethe version of the story, with Gretchen burned at the stake. The perspective's completely different from the medieval version. Goethe's heretical!

His God jests with the Devil who makes a bet that he can corrupt even the holiest of men, scholarly old Faust. Germany's in the grip of terrible plague, Savonarolas and false prophets abound. Faust realizes books aren't going to help, so he does a deal with the devil, deliciously played by Emil Jannings, the schoolmaster in The Blue Angel., which you can see in full download on this site by clicking on the link.

Faust gets turned into a handsome young man, re-enacting the youth he probably didn't have curled up with books.  He and Gretchen fall in love and there's a baby. So she gets thrown out and eventually burned at the stake. Faust returns, but now he's old and wretched again. Still, Gretchen recognizes him, and he's redeemed. Liebe, says the film, written in flames.  Love wins, not so much God, unless it was God who willed love to happen.

This film is such an influential classic. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalpse, the crowd scenes, and the landscape over which the Devil flies, carrying Faust in his arms.  Evil birds of doom, a bit like cranes but scarier. Precursors of the airborne hordes in Flash Gordon or Apocalypse Now? A very "Germanic" setting. This proved to be Murnau's last Weimar movie. By 1927 he was settled successfully in Hollywood. What a cultural jump from Faust to Sunrise, Murnau's adaptation of a Gerrman story to open-air California.