Oper Graz
Hector Berlioz
La Damnation de Faust

Oper

Three people dressed in black against a red background: A man with small horns sits in the back and extends his arms; a man and woman people sit in front holding hands.

Photo: Ingo Pertramer

Following The Trojans, named one of the ten best productions of 2025 by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Graz Opera continues to explore one of the 19th century’s most fascinating musical eccentrics. In his 1846 masterpiece, French sound magician Hector Berlioz dissects Goethe’s myth into vivid singular visions. With his artist’s tragedy—excessive in its means—he creates a romantic alternative to the classical dualism of reason and nature found in the source material.

For director Lorenzo Fioroni, La Damnation de Faust becomes a game of knowledge: The longing for simplicity, for a clear direction, is met by the present with overwhelming demands and the imposition of complexity. The production sees Berlioz’s idiosyncratic work as an invitation to a sensory thought experiment in which the mythical Faust material is reexamined and becomes a mirror of a world out of joint.