We went to see Gounod’s Faust at the Coliseum tonight – ever so conveniently, ENO decided to schedule my Da’s favourite opera not just for while he’s here, but right around his birthday too. How very considerate of them 🙂 It was my first experience of this particular opera and while there’s certainly some lovely music in it, it didn’t really grab me. I suspect quite a bit of it had to do with the rather repellent and somewhat heavy-handed 19th-century morality in the last act, where everyone’s blaming poor Margarita for all their misdoings. Certainly she’s not entirely free of guilt, but her brother blaming her for his death when he chose to fight a duel was a bit rich. Anyway, don’t think it’ll become a favourite. The performance was good though – some great voices and overall a reasonable translation into English – the arias did fare better than the choruses in general though.