Faust, Nested Reception and La Castafiore

Abstract

This article examines an example of what might be called 'nested' receptionthe representation of one work of art within another -in the shape of Gounod's Faust, performances of which were depicted in media ranging from late nineteenth-and early twentiethcentury novels to the long-running comic strip Les Aventures de Tintin. In particular, it considers the reception issues raised by the last of these, in which the opera's persistence in the surrounding culture is represented by repeated (and often unexpected) performances of the 'Jewel Song' by the diva La Castafiore. Part repository of opera cliché and part creative commentary on Faust 's place in a shrinking and stagnating repertory, the passages featuring Castafiore may also pose questions for musicologists: not just about the materials we use to recuperate and represent historical echoes, in the broadest sense, of opera, but also about the historical and critical models we use to interpret them.My excuse to begin writing about some of the issues addressed here was provided (in the shape of a programme note commission for the revival of the 2004 David McVicar production of Faust at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden) by John Snelson, to whom I should like to express my sincere gratitude. The illustrations appear thanks to Claire Denniel, Marie-Claude Klein and Clair Rowden, and by kind permission of Moulinsart S.A., in particular Cécile Camberlin.