Pascal Dusapin - Faustus, the last night (2006) [video]

Opera by Pascal Dusapin
Libretto built by Pascal Dusapin on ideas and quotations from Marlowe, Shakespeare, Blake, The Bible, and many others…
Cast: Georg Nigl, Urban Malmberg, Robert Wörle, Jaco Huijpen, Caroline Stein
Orchestre National de Lyon - Jonathan Stockhammer, conductor
Peter Mussbach, stage director
Yvon Gérault, film director

French composer Pascal Dusapin´s based "Faustus, the last night" loosely on Marlowe´s "Doktor Faustus" (as opposed to Goethe´s, as Dusapin emphasized), but with a myriad of other influences, such as Dante, Samuel Beckett etc.
This is an opera of philosophical ideas. A conversational piece between Faustus and Méphistophéles taking place on Faust´s last night passing from the living to the damned. Several characters are added such as as Sly, from "The taming of the Shrew" (Dusapin: My favourite Shakespearean character), a terrified Angel and Togod (to God). Faustus is megalomaniac and asks all sorts of questions. Méphistophéles does not want to answer in a discussion centered around the creation of the world and the nature of ideas where Dusapin´s self-confessed sympathy lies with Méphistopheles.
There is no linear plot in this 1,5 hour very intellectual piece, but Pascal Dusapin´s music is rather powerful, dark and relatively rich-textured. This opera is one of the musically most interesting newly composed opera within the last decade together with the operas of Kaija Saariaho.