Festival Berlioz 2017

In the summer of 2017, Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique performed Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust at Festival Berlioz, preceded by a storming performance at the BBC Proms on 8 Aug. These performances were part of a five year celebration of the composer’s work in honour of the 150th anniversary of his death, which will be in 2019.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner returned to Festival Berlioz with La Damnation de Faust continuing his multi-season Berlioz series. It is a work of extremely broad scope; part opera, part cantata and designed for four solo voices, full seven-part chorus, large children’s chorus and orchestra. It is an epic retelling of the Faust story that captures the extremes of man’s ambition and folly in music, by turns exquisite and grotesque, described by Berlioz as a ‘dramatic legend’.

American tenor Michael Spyres starred in the title role alongside Swedish mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg as Marguerite. They were joined by fellow soloists Laurent Naouri (Mephistopheles), Ashley Riches (Brander) and Emma Lewis along with the National Youth Choir of Scotland and the Petits chanteurs de Lyon