Poetry
Doktor Faust: A Dance Poem
Der Doktor Faust. Ein Tanzpoem
Heinrich Heine · 1851
Opening lines
Studierzimmer, groß, gewölbt, in gotischem Stil. Spärliche Beleuchtung.
A study, large, vaulted, in the Gothic style. Sparse lighting.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from zeno.org
Synopsis
At midnight, Doctor Faust conjures the devil, and it is a she-devil, Mephistophela, who rises from the opened earth. She teaches him to dance and, through the apparition of a beauty, obtains that he give up his salvation in exchange for the pleasures of the earth, a pact celebrated by a ballet of princes of hell. Faust then recognises this beauty in the wife of a duke and, discovering that she is a witch, invites her to the next sabbath.
Context
Benjamin Lumley, director of Her Majesty's Theatre in London, commissioned this ballet from Heine, who wrote it between the end of 1846 and the beginning of 1847. The season was swept away by the success of the singer Jenny Lind and by quarrels among the choreographers, and the ballet was not staged; Heine nevertheless received compensation. His publisher Julius Campe, who was to include it in the Romanzero, published it separately in 1851, with “curious reports on devils, witches and poetry”. A French version reduced to an outline had appeared in Paris as early as 1847.
Who it is for
A short ballet argument in five acts, followed by the author's notes on the legend; it is read alongside Goethe's Faust, which it takes in reverse.
Prizes and reception
Never staged in London, the text was turned into ballet in the twentieth century, by František Škvor in 1926 and then by Werner Egk, whose Abraxas dates from 1948.
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