work
Faust
also: Фауст, Marguerite, Маргарита
Charles Gounod's 1859 grand opera after Goethe's Faust, a staple of the international repertoire; its heroine Marguerite becomes the role that transforms the story's red-haired chorus girl into a star singer.
Reading notes
- Two Scandals §21 Mephistopheles and Valentin
Roles in Gounod's opera Faust -- the devil and the soldier brother of Marguerite -- here standing in for the singers who play them, drinking champagne with the conductor backstage.
- Two Scandals §72 Faust
Charles Gounod's 1859 opera after Goethe, one of the most popular works in the international repertoire; its heroine Marguerite is the role the chorus girl has since risen to sing.
- From the Notes of a Hot-Tempered Man §77 disappears like Mephistopheles through a trapdoor
A stock theatrical comparison: in stage productions of Gounod's opera Faust (and its source, Goethe's drama), Mephistopheles's sudden entrances and exits were conventionally staged as vanishing through a trapdoor in a puff of smoke -- a familiar bit of stagecraft that Chekhov borrows to describe Mashenka's mother's guilty, comic retreat from the summerhouse doorway.
- He and She §4 Marguerite
The heroine of Charles Gounod's opera Faust (1859), the star vehicle role in which a diva's real age and appearance are most flatteringly disguised by stagecraft.
- To A. S. Kiselev, 1888. Moscow. §2 Villain, thou art vanquished!
A line from Charles Gounod's opera "Faust," sung by Faust in triumph over the mortally wounded Valentin; Chekhov casts himself in the defeated role, since -- contrary to the bet he had made with Kiselev -- there was in fact no diploma ceremony.
- The Third Case §3 Faust
Charles Gounod's 1859 grand opera after Goethe's "Faust"; the performance during which the narrator's disastrous proposal takes place.