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Mar 16, 2001
Several of the Faust operas contain both illegitimacy and infanticide. Many listeners who experience Gounod's 1859 Faust know only that Marguerite has borne a child, via a single throwaway line in Act IV, Scene 2, the final prison scene, in which Faust exclaims "Son pauvre enfant...tué par elle!" – "Her poor baby...killed by her." It is up to the audience to deduce that this is why Marguerite is even in prison. However, the uncut version of the opera contains an additional scene that opens Act III. It takes place after Marguerite's seduction by Faust yet prior to Valentin’s return. We find her at home, spinning, lamenting that the townspeople, with the exception of the faithful Siebel, have shunned her -- and that Faust has himself abandoned her. Here ensues her "Spinning Wheel" song, "Il ne revient pas" – "He does not return." Significantly, she then provides her own segue to the Church scene that follows, by informing Siebel that she is going to pray to God, "pour mon enfant et pour lui" – "for my child and for him [Faust]." In the next scene, in church, Méphistophélès substitutes himself for the voice of God and proclaims that Marguerite is damned; in the scene after that, Valentin learns of her shame and, while not blaming her for precipitating his death by duel, roundly curses Marguerite for having strayed from the path of virtue. We may only assume that in the combined horror of having been condemned by both church and her only and revered living relative, she goes on to murder her newborn child to erase the evidence of her guilt. In Boito's 1868 Mefistofele, Margherita performs both infanticide and matricide. As she explains in the air "L’altra notte" – "The other night," she has been accused of drowning her baby but she believes that some unnamed "They" are responsible for the crime; worse, that They claim she has poisoned her mother with the sleeping potion she had administered to her, to allow Faust to visit their home for his trysts. But when Faust bursts in to try to rescue Margherita, she comes to her sense, confessing that she herself had performed both killings; and most movingly begs him to dig a grave for her late mother to lie in the finest section of the cemetery, and to dig another grave, too, for Margherita herself to be laid with her dead infant upon her breast. As in Gounod's opera, by turning to God instead of fleeing to earthly safety with Faust, Margherita guarantees herself a place in heaven.
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