#also cards on the table here the ending of the mcvicar one absolutely gutted me

[shredsandpatches]

Watched the end of the 2011 Met Faust this morning and I gotta say, I don't love when productions of the Gounod opera kill off the title character at the end. As usual with staging choices like this, I get why, but, like. In Berlioz Faust goes to hell, in Boito he goes to heaven, in Gounod he's still alive and the ultimate fate of his soul is left ambiguous.* It kinda wrecks the symmetry.

*Of course, Gounod's opera ends exactly where Goethe's Part I does, and Faust is ultimately saved in Part II (hence, Boito's version, which actually has a more emotionally satisfying salvation because it's focused on the character dynamic rather than the metaphysics and I'm a basic bitch) but the opera is its own thing and I like it to have an ambiguous ending.