Best-known today as the librettist of Verdi’s final Shakespearean masterpieces, Otello and Falstaff, the multi-talented Arrigo Boito was also a fine composer in his own right. Hugely ambitious in scope, and some 20 years in the making, his first (and only completed) opera, Mefistofele, sets out to encompass nothing less than the whole of Goethe’s vast poetic drama Faust (parts I and II), and is considered the very central work of his phase between Verdi and Puccini.

Making his debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper, director Roland Schwab (a protégé of the legendary Ruth Berghaus) plays devil’s advocate by setting the opera in a nightmarish atmosphere. “The exceptional solistic cast” (ORF) features René Pape, Joseph Calleja, Kristine Opolais and Karine Babajanyan.

Singing “with clear, strong bass lines” (Deutschlandradio Kultur), René Pape plays Mefistofele as the sardonic leader of a satanic cult. As Faust, his slave, Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja “hits his high notes with formidable vigour” (Financial Times). Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais’s Margherita “shines with understated Grace Kelly elegance” (Opera Today), while as Elena – the fabled Helen of Troy – Armenian soprano Karine Babajanyan “shines with heroic high notes” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). Finally, in the pit, Israeli conductor Omer Meir Wellber “holds all the musical textures together with admirable control” (BR Klassik).

Running Time: 140 mins
Picture 16:9, HD
Sound: DTS 5.1, PCM Stereo
Subtitles: Italian (original language), English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese
Booklet: English, German, French