The Walpurgis night scene of Goethe furnished the suggestion for the ballet which fills the first three scenes of the fifth act, and which was added to the opera when it was remodelled for the Grand Opera in 1869.  The scene holds its place in Paris, but is seldom performed elsewhere.  A wild scene in the Harz Mountains gives way to an enchanted hail in which are seen the most famous courtesans of ancient history—­Phryne, Lais, Aspasia, Cleopatra, and Helen of Troy.  The apparition of Marguerite appears to Faust, a red line encircling her neck, like the mark of a headsman’s axe.  We reach the end.  The distraught maiden has slain her child, and now lies in prison upon her pallet of straw, awaiting death.  Faust enters and tries to persuade her to fly with him.  Her poor mind is all awry and occupies itself only with the scenes of her first meeting and the love-making in the garden.  She turns with horror from her lover when she sees his companion, and in an agony of supplication, which rises higher and higher with each reiteration, she implores Heaven for pardon.  She sinks lifeless to the floor.  Mephistopheles pronounces her damned, but a voice from on high proclaims her saved.  Celestial voices chant the Easter hymn, “Christ is risen!” while a band of angels bear her soul heavenward.

CHAPTER VII

“Mefistofele”

There is no reason to question Gounod’s statement that it was he who conceived the idea of writing a Faust opera in collaboration with mm.  Barbier and Carre.  There was nothing novel in the notion.  Music was an integral part of the old puppet-plays which dealt with the legend of Dr. Faustus, and Goethe’s tragedy calls for musical aid imperatively.  A musical pantomime, “Harlequin Faustus,” was performed in London as early as 1715, and there were Faust operas long before even the first part of Goethe’s poem was printed, which was a hundred and one years ago.  A composer named Phanty brought out an opera entitled “Dr. Faust’s Zaubergurtel” in 1790; C. Hanke used the same material and title at Flushing in 1794, and Ignaz Walter produced a “Faust” in Hanover in 1797.  Goethe’s First Part had been five years in print when Spohr composed his “Faust,” but it is based not on the great German poet’s version of the legend, but on the old sources.  This opera has still life, though it is fitful and feeble, in Germany, and was produced in London by a German company in 1840 and by an Italian in 1852, when the composer conducted it; but I have never heard of a representation in America.  Between Spohr’s “Faust,” written in 1813 and performed in 1818, and Boito’s “Mefistofele,” produced in 1868, many French, German, English, Italian, Russian, and Polish Faust operas have come into existence, lived their little lives, and died.  Rietz produced a German “Faust,” founded on Goethe, at Dusseldorf, in 1836; Lindpainter in Berlin, in 1854; Henry Rowley Bishop’s English “Faustus”