Charles-François Gounod’s Faust premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris on 19 March 1859. It underwent several revisions over the following decade, including the insertion of a ballet into Act V to meet the expectations of grand opera, and was extremely popular in the nineteenth century. It was the work with which New York’s Metropolitan Opera opened for the first time on 22 October 1883, while Covent Garden included it in its...

It is an artistic concept of the Norwegian director Stefan Herheim which converts the traditional perceptions of a play. It is his way of a very intelligent nearly limitless presentation of the reconstruction of a piece. He shows in Hoffmann a man, who deconstructs himself, looking for his identity in his tales, which we all thought to know so far. Stefan Herheim further develops his radical concept by analysing the composer and the time of creation. Having said so, it is easier to...