Word: fausts
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Wayde in reverse. His hero is a thirtyish young man who rather naively decides that the only way he can achieve inner peace and fiscal happiness is by selling his soul to a large Manhattan corporation, and starts to do so only to find that 1) he is not Faust, and 2) the corporation is not Mephistopheles...
...Faust sings of his despair. When he sees the coming of daylight, he closes the shutters. The pale sunbeams (supplied by a spot high up on Suhren's fly gallery) disappear. He threatens to kill himself, but-as Chorus Master Taussig on his stepladder gives the beat-women's voices offstage urge Faust to live...
...basement, directly below Faust's vocal soul-struggles, Mephistopheles (Basso Nicola Moscona) paces nervously, dressed in evening clothes, redlined Inverness cape, with top hat and cane. Three grips stand ready at the trapdoor platform. Another maestro, with a score on his lap, sits near by. Mephistopheles clears his throat, begins la-la-la softly. The maestro, straining to hear the orchestra, says, "Ready!" and Mephisto steps onto the platform...
...Faust sings, "A moi, Satan, à moi!" and throws his book into the fireplace. An electrician switches on a fan, which sends flame-colored paper streamers upward into sight of the audience. The basement maestro makes an abrupt pronouncement: "Up with him!" The stagehands lift the platform and Mephisto into the air. The audience first sees him sitting on the arm of the chair that screens the trapdoor, nonchalantly swinging his foot and cane. Meanwhile, behind the rear study wall. Marguerite (Soprano Nadine Conner) is climbing a narrow set of stairs to a platform, aided by a stagehand...
...Mephisto flourishes his cane. Behind the scenery, backstage spots begin to glow, lighting Singer Conner; as a result, Faust and the audience see the vision of Marguerite through a scrimmed hole in the middle of Faust's bookcase. Faust, enraptured, signs away his soul to the Devil, drinks the potion to restore his youth. While Mephisto struts about flashing his cape to distract the audience, Faust rips off his old-man disguise and springs forward as a young...