Faust was a role that tenor Matthew Polenzani thought had passed him by. “A little part of me had kind of given up hope,” he says in an interview before the Houston Grand Opera production of Faust opens on October 30.
After weeks of rehearsal he says: “It’s been a dream.” Most opera lovers would say Polenzani has been living the dream in many ways. Last seen at HGO in 2023 in Werther., he has starred in more than 400 performances at The Metropolitan Opera.
And what perfect timing to make his role debut as the title character in Faust with the macabre tale opening on Halloween weekend. The HGO production has been reset to Belle Époque Paris and in this version Faust is a tormented composer.
In this good versus evil tale told with beautiful and spooky music by Gounod, there’s a lot going on in its five acts. In Act I the aged Faust makes a deal with the devil that in exchange for an elixir of youth, his soul will go to hell when he dies. To reach the object of Faust’s affection – Marguerite – Mephistopheles places a casket full of jewels at her front door. Faust gains entry to Marguerite’s bedroom and in short order she is pregnant.
In Act IV, as events unfold, Marguerite’s brother Valentine returns from the war, challenges Faust to a dual, and is killed by Faust. In th efinal ActV, An insane Marguerite kills her baby and begs God for forgiveness as the devil shouts that she is damned.
Asked to describe his character, Polenzani says:
“Old, bitter, resentful, depressed. He’s got a lot of those things that people who are unsatisfied tend to hold onto. He’s deeply lonely. My heart huts for him even though he makes the complete wrong choice.
“I understand why he does what he does. Because when your heart is empty like that you’re just looking for even the tiniest shred of hope or love or being wanted or being needed. These are things that he probably never felt or if he felt them it’s been years.
“He’s a guy who’s got a lot of empty space in his world. And the things that he looked to to fill it up were useless” Polenzani says. “As a guy who grew up as a Christian anyway, I’m aware that God can fill up a lot of these spaces if you allow it. My point of view is he just needed people in his life and he didn’t have anybody. It makes him willing to make this deal with Satan.
Polenzani grew up near Chicago and comes from an artistic family. “My parents were barber shoppers and my mom plays the piano. My sister [Rose Polenzani] has had an excellent career as a folk musician. She’s probably sold more albums than I did. My grandfather was a famous advertising guy and he was a famous barber shopper too.”
But he almost wasn’t ever a professional opera singer. “I went to school to be a high school choral conductor.” Famed bass-baritone Alan Held was conducting a master class at Eastern Illinois University and Polenzani sang for him. After the class, Held pulled him aside and asked if he’d ever thought of opera as a career, pointing out that opera productions “always need tenors.”
Through his connections, Held recommended Polenzani to the opera program at Yale where he auditioned and was accepted. He spent three years there and by the end of that time, he says, he had changed his career plans to opera. But he says he really enjoyed the student teaching he did. “Being a high school choral conductor wouldn’t have been a fall back for me. It was also a dream.”
Again, describing his character Faust, Polenzani says “I do think he had buyer’s remorse. We do see glimpses of him understanding that what he’s doing is wrong. But his own desire to feel love and to see purity interested in him, this desire to be needed and appreciated it overwhelms. And even though he tries to save her in the end, that ship sailed the second he signed the contract.
“In the end it’s not really Faust’s soul that Mephistopheles is after, this soul is old and corrupted already. He’s really after Marguerite’s soul, the pure soul. That’s who he wants to destroy. And he makes it happen. And Faust is the tool that he uses.”
“The show is not about Faust even though it’s called Faust,” Polenzani says. “We’re watching Mephisto blow up everybody’s world. Without Faust, Mephisto cannot enter into Marguerite’s world. He needs this crowbar to ruin her.”
Performances are scheduled for October 30 through November 15 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sundays at the Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. Sung in French with English surtitles. For more information, call 713-228-6737 or visit houstongrandopera.org. $25-$287.50.
