Doktor Faust was left incomplete at the time of Busoni’s death. Intended as his masterpiece, the opera’s genesis was complex and long. Based on Goethe’s tragic play, the story of Faust’s pact with the devil is well known but the opera’s structure represents Busoni’s unique conception, cast in two Prologues, a beautiful orchestral Intermezzo and three scenes. Exploring ideas of rationality and metaphysical doubt as well as the concepts of artifice and pretence inherent in operatic performance, the result is one of the most creative and unsettling of Busoni’s works.

On the podium we find Cornelius Meister who manages to bring out the various themes of the score by channeling them into an overall vision of a late-romantic style. The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra offers a crescendo performance, compacting and becoming more flexible over the course of the evening, while the Choir, prepared by Lorenzo Fratini, confirms itself as a certainty especially in the complex scene of the university diatribe of Wittenberg.