iAfrica.com has issued the following report:
The dark tale of
Faust and his existential journey has left its classical opera setting and will be depicted in "the world's first" heavy metal opera in the small western Norwegian town of Kristiansund on Friday.
"When it comes to the theme,
Faust is perfect for heavy metal and vice versa," Kristiansund opera chief
Jan Karstensen told
AFP.
"
Faust addresses some of the great, eternal questions about a person's integrity and whether it should be for sale... and whether we should manipulate the natural course of life," he said. "Metal too addresses the big questions in life through its expression of our dark side."
The
Faust myth dates back to the 15th century and has been depicted by numerous great authors through the centuries, including
Christopher Marlow (1588-92),
George Lord Byron (1817) and
Thomas Mann (1947).
Perhaps most influential, however, is German author
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's two-part tragedy, published in 1790 and 1808, in which
Dr. Faust sells his soul to
Mephistopheles, the devil, in exchange for experiencing things in the world that no human has seen.
Goethe's story, in which
Faust's turbulent voyage leads to the downfall of his beloved
Gretchen, was in 1859 turned into the now famous opera with music by
Charles Francois Gounod.
"A local metal band called
PICA FIERCE has taken
Gounod's music and paraphrased it, if you will,"
Karstensen said, insisting that the result will be the world's first heavy metal opera.
"There have been rock operas in the past, like
THE WHO's
'Tommy', but this is a melting together of genres like no one's ever seen before," he said, adding that the four-members of
PICA FIERCE would perform with 15 classical musicians from the Kristiansund
Opera's Sinfonietta.
Read more at
iAfrica.com.
