'Faust' opera to open at MAC

The opera "Faust" contains beautiful melodies, grandiose sets, sword fights and a pitched battle between good and evil.\nAnd that's all in the first two minutes, said Mark Clark, production and stage director of IU Opera Theatre.\nIn a symposium Wednesday, Clark, guest stage director Dale Girard and professor emeritus Peter Boerner discussed the legend and history of "Faust," which has been rewritten dozens of times since the 1500s.\nCharles Gounod's version is IU Opera's most recent production, which opens at 8 p.m. today at the Musical Arts Center. The opera will also be performed at 8 p.m. Saturday, and Feb. 9 and 10. \nIn IU Opera's production of "Faust," graduate student Johan Weigel plays Faust, graduate student Stephanie Dawn Johnson plays Margarita and graduate student Harold Wilson plays Mephistopheles. The three performed the ending trio to the opera, "Dawn is Coming," at the end of the lecture Wednesday.\nThe story of Faust centers on a pact made with the devil, Mephistopheles, and the woman Faust longs for, Margarita. Faust makes a pact with the devil, selling his soul to win Margarita's heart. In the end, the story becomes a struggle of good versus evil, of the holy versus the unholy. \n"The different versions of 'Faust' reflect the time and culture of their particular forums," Clark said. "By looking at all these versions important to the story ... we can perhaps discover why (Gounod's version) has been so much more popularized than the other conceptions of the story."\nGounod's version is one of the few of "Faust" that is entirely musical. It also is more modernized for a popular audience, Girard said.\n"This version of 'Faust' is what Hollywood would do to a book today," Girard said.\nAnother popular conception of the story was Johann Wolfe Goethe's interpretation. Goethe, who lived from 1749-1832, first picked up on Faust when he was 23 years old and finished his second book on Faust a year before his death.\nBoerner is the former curator of the Goethe Museum in Dusseldorf, Germany. \nBoerner said almost all treatments of Faust relate back to one man, possibly named Johannes Faust, who lived in Germany's Black Forest in the 15th century.\n"He was an astrologer, a traveler, a quack and above all, a big mouth," he said. "After his death, the stories about him grew and grew"