I thought no one would ever top Christian Van Horn’s turn in the title role of Boito’s Mefistofele at the Met in 2018. It’s one of my top-10 productions of all time, and it kicked off both my Van Horn fandom and a more intense era of hunting down operas I hadn’t seen before. So I went into Gounod’s Faust at the Bayerische Staatsoper excited, but trying to keep my expectations realistic.
I needn’t have worried. I hadn’t read up on the cast beforehand, so imagine my delight when bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen walked onstage, one night after being one of the (only) highlights of Der Freischütz. The night before, he sold his soul as Kaspar; here, he switched sides of the bargain as Méphistophélès. If I thought he was deliciously evil then, he put his earlier self to shame. Suddenly, Van Horn has some competition.
Ketelsen prowled the stage like a menacing alley cat, lying on the roof of a house and swirling his coat, and I wanted to cackle with glee the entire time. This Méphistophélès isn’t played as a morally gray hero — he’s EVIL, and I love it.
Soprano Nicole Car, stepping in for Ailyn Pérez, was his perfect foil as Marguerite. (I’d last seen her as Elisabetta in Don Carlo at the Dallas Opera.) I was worried about missing Pérez, whom I enjoy quite a bit, but Car won me over. She played the role with such sensitivity that, even through the story’s darkest turns, you couldn’t help but feel for her. Set against Ketelsen’s almost campy villainy, the contrast worked beautifully.
With this pair onstage, I could forgive a lot. Good thing, because I wasn’t 100% sold on director Lotte de Beer’s concept, though I appreciated that she pushed the envelope. Faust is a transgressive story, and this production doesn’t shy away from it (see: a dead baby tossed onto a trash heap). The set (from stage designer Christof Hetzer) was ingenious, giving the work real “movement” as the scenes changed quickly. The projections (from lighting designer Benedikt Zehm) were a highlight, evoking all the hedonism of the underworld. Projections can so easily feel overdone, but these were genuinely impressive. Hats off to him.
Vocally, the whole cast delivered. Tenor Piotr Beczała was good in the title role (I’d previously seen him in the Met’s Andrea Chénier), and the Staatsoper chorus was powerful, but no one could surpass our Méphistophélès.
Two nights, two deals with the devil, and Ketelsen was in both of them. This was also my second opera based on the Faust tale, after Mefistofele. If they’re all this much fun, I’ll need to collect a third, and Berlioz’s version is next on my list. Even wilder: the February run has a completely separate cast, including Pérez as Marguerite and Van Horn himself as Méphistophélès. Van Horn versus Ketelsen in the same production? I may have to go back and settle it.
Opera: Faust
Composer: Charles Gounod
Venue: Bayerische Staatsoper
Date: July 30, 2026
Link: https://www.staatsoper.de/en/productions/faust/2026-07-30-1900-15721
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