TV Reviews : ‘Mefistofele’ From S.F. Via PBS

We always knew that Faust went to the devil. Goethe told us. So did Gounod, Busoni, Berlioz and Boito.

Last season, however, the San Francisco Opera actually made “Mefistofele” go to the devil. Trashing Boito became a popular pastime at the War Memorial Opera House.

The romantic Italian opera was dispatched to hell and back with a lot of cynical glitz and a little interpolated raunch. The result was as dazzling as it was wrong-headed.

Robert Carsen, the director, and Michael Levine, his designing accomplice, ignored the simple pathos of the score, not to mention the mythic profundity of its literary source. The theatrical whiz-kids concentrated instead on a nifty musical circus decorated with sight gags.

The universe became a Baroque theater run by none other than old Mef, who clambered out of the orchestra pit via a convenient ladder. He was the fellow with the deep voice, the red beard, the matching suit, the bare chest, the little horns and the odd habit of hitching tenors, Peter Pan style, to hokey aerial contraptions. He’s the one who cackled dramatically while carrying on a petty argument with an invisible God.

The satanical protagonist cast poor Faust as the chubby juvenile lead in a nightmare show within the show. Ah, that sweet theatrical cliche again.

The colorful, anti-musical, dramatically contradictory proceedings were observed by a choir of masked angels stationed in fake proscenium boxes. In the final apotheosis, they showered the floor with fistfuls of confetti. Presumably, that glittery act symbolized salvation.

This “Mefistofele” looked magnificently silly in the opera house. It looks just as silly on the television, thanks to PBS and the optimistically titled “Great Performances” series (KCET Channel 28 transmits the tape on Sunday at 2 p.m.).

Carsen’s images are amusingly telegenic, if nothing else, and Brian Large moves his cameras around them resourcefully. He even knows when to look the other way, allowing a glimpse of nudity in a generally sanitized version of the kermesse scene but no suggestion of priapic prostheses at the witches’ sabbath.

It is, no doubt, a mere coincidence that the National Endowment for the Arts serves among the sponsors.

The cast seems more effective than memories of a performance at the War Memorial Opera house last September suggested. Samuel Ramey emits mighty noises and strikes gleeful poses in the title role. Dennis O’Neill brings bel-canto fervor to the music of Faust, even if he doesn’t fly through the air with the greatest of ease. Gabriela Benackova makes Margherita a poignant peasant and Helen of Troy a dignified diva.

Maurizio Arena conducts with an stubborn sense of the grand sentimental style. It might be interesting, some day, to hear what he can do in a production that doesn’t belie the music.