The purgatorial power of Berlioz's teeming choral-orchestral hybrid, La Damnation de Faust, is a spectacular way to begin any festival. But with conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi and the Cleveland Orchestra, a cast of soloists like Bryn Terfel, Jennifer Larmore and Vinson Cole, and a small army of singers, it proved a suitably stunning curtain-raiser for the international festival - and a star-studded christening for the newly refurbished Usher Hall.
Inspired by Goethe's definitive romantic tragedy, Berlioz's invention in La Damnation encompasses everything from celestial choirs to drunken mobs and bloodthirsty demons. Although designed as a concert work, the piece is really an opera for the imagination. The unearthly colours that Berlioz draws from his huge orchestral resources and massed ranks of choirs are as vividly theatrical as any 19th-century horror opera. Yet somehow the oratorio format makes the work seem even more dramatic than it would be in the theatre. In passages like the final Pandemonium, with its chorus of the damned singing in an unknown tongue, and the Princes of Darkness ruled by Mephistopheles' diabolical magic, Berlioz's score completely transcends its function as a purely musical concert piece. Instead, the music's immediacy is an assault on all the senses, suggesting a kaleidoscope of images that would be impossible to realise on the stage.
But the score needs more than mere brute force if Berlioz's visions of mortal and immortal life are to jump off the page as they should. Von Dohnanyi has been superbly convincing in realising the fantasy of Berlioz's orchestration, yet making individual scenes serve the ends of the whole drama. For all that the concluding Ride to the Abyss had a glorious, twisted grandeur, it also provided a dramatic contrast to the pastoral reverie of the earlier Dance of the Sylphes. The special magnificence of the Cleveland Orchestra's woodwind section brought to life the otherworldly choreography of Berlioz's filigree spirits.
At the centre of the performance was Vinson Cole's Faust. Unencumbered by a score, he was by turns an innocent fool and selfish, helpless oaf, tormented by Mephistopheles' relentless pursuit of his soul. Cole caught Faust's world-weariness especially successfully in the first part, perfectly portraying Berlioz's conception of the philosophical and narcissistic side of his anti-hero.
Bryn Terfel was magnetic as Mephistopheles. From his first entry, accompanied by a spectral crash of cymbals and shimmering strings, Terfel's presence commanded the stage just as his Mephistopheles led Faust inexorably to his doom. Terfel was the ideal vocal foil for Cole's Faust. Where Cole emphasised the languorous lyricism of his part, Terfel was chillingly assertive and uncompromising, even in the deft virtuosity of the Song of the Flea.
Neal Davies made for a jovial Brander; Jennifer Larmore's Marguerite, however, was less sharply focused than the other solo roles, even if her set pieces in the third part were beguiling. But choruses from Cleveland and Edinburgh, along with the RSNO Junior Chorus, were mightily impressive in their roles as peasants, students and spirits, ensuring the supernatural success of Berlioz's epic.
