Bringing Faust to Tel Aviv, opera makes a wheel with the devil
Italian director Stefano Poda’s contemporary production gives classic tale an unfamiliar ring
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
Days before the Israeli Opera’s March 5 opening of “Faust,” Stefano Poda was feeling pleased.
The Italian director, designer and choreographer had been in Tel Aviv for a month, perfecting this co-production of the Teatro Regio of Torino, the New Israeli Opera and the Opera of Lausanne, which runs through March 25, and he now deemed it ready for real-time.
“It’s all working,” he said, pointing at the massive set below, which was brought all the way from Italy, with a giant metal ring slowly rotating on an axis around the stage. “It’s not a small thing.”
Indeed, the set of “Faust” brought from Italy — with a giant black metal ring, inset with sculptures and mechanically rotating around the circumference of the stage, surrounded by high walls of gray stone — is far from simple, but fairly typical of Poda’s creative imagination.
The set is elemental for Poda in the telling the story of Faust, an aging scholar, concerned that his lifelong studies have come to nothing and left him out of life and love. He signs a pact with the devil and receives an elixir of youth that renders him young and handsome, then sets out to conquer the world.
From that historical tale comes Poda’s interpretation of the oft-told story, aiming, as is his habit, to put a contemporary stamp on a well-known tale, whose French libretto is based on German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play.
The ring, for instance, is a sacred symbol of the pact Faust makes with the devil. Typically, for Poda, however, he thought of creating a massive wheel, initially intending something like the kind used by gerbils and hamsters.
“The last words of Goethe in ‘Faust’ were, “What did you do, Faust, and Faust says, ‘I just ran,'” said Poda.
“We run, we run, it’s man’s necessity, and we make a pact with each day,” he said. “This is a journey from the small world of the bourgeoisie to the big thinkers, the mythology, it’s an important journey. But we turn again, it’s all a circle, and so the stage is moving all the time, the set never stops.”
His technical team back in Torino told him that a gerbil wheel wasn’t possible, so he settled for the enormous ring.
This is typical of the way Poda thinks about all of his opera sets, and of his thinking since he was a boy, setting up grand puppet shows in his bedroom, creating a unified look based on costumes, set and lighting.
“I grew up thinking about these massive sets and ideas,” he said. “The music is the soul, so the lighting must follow the music, as well as the costumes and the set. The whole thing has to be unified.”
It’s a very different way to approach opera, the classical form of spoken and sung theater that began in Italy in the late 16th century. It’s an art form that Poda has always loved, but one that he knows is more difficult to relate to for those less familiar with the tradition.
Poda hopes that his audiences will sit back and ponder their own lives while watching the production of “Faust,” reflecting on their challenges. The opera setting, he pointed out, is one of the last places where people can sit with their thoughts, given that church — synagogues too, for that matter — are less popular than they once were.
“The theater is perhaps the last occasion to stay alone in your thoughts and with the music, and to unify all those feelings,” he said.
Poda wants his audiences to connect to what’s unfolding onstage. He doesn’t want a realistic stage set, but rather something that is open to interpretation, that can express an audience members’ feelings.
“Today, we’re all running around, running for Botox, for Ferraris, for all of these things, it’s a reflection of our own vanity,” he said.
Hence the words Vanitas, the Latin term for vanity, etched in the black ring rotating on stage.
Since this production moves to new locations three times over the course of a year, each shift allows Poda to rethink the production. He’s enjoyed recreating the production in Israel, where he’s experienced a “special” energy, he said, with the performers and technical staff at the Israeli Opera.
“People are very willing here, they never say ‘no,'” he said. “That’s kind of unusual these days.”
The co-productions are a way of offsetting the costs of Poda’s expensive sets, as each opera house shares in the costs and then hosts the Torino cast of visiting performers, augmented by local dancers and singers in each city. He produces between three and six operas each year, moving around the world to the theaters that host Poda and his operas.
Poda has produced 100 operas in his 20-year career, ranging from familiar, beloved scores he’s more familiar with, to others that are newer to him. But the process of directing an opera is always the same, beginning with listening to and reading the music, followed by drawings and paintings of his imagined sets, and then translating that into a technical design.
He wants to create a certain perfection onstage, but recognizes that he can’t always achieve it, often because of price or technicalities. But even those limitations help him gain a certain synthesis, and search for different solutions.
“Each thing has to fit with the other, the choreography with the costumes, with the set, with the music, with the lighting,” he said. “It’s not just one thing in an opera. The unity must be there. This for me is opera, and that makes it work for everyone, not just opera lovers.”
For dates and ticket information on the production of “Faust,’ go to the Israeli Opera site.
