Pascal Dusapin’s New Lyrical Style in Faustus, the Last Night

Abstract

Pascal Dusapin, an acclaimed French composer, created the opera Faustus, the Last Night in 2005–6. In this dark work, the myth of Faust from the perspective of Marlowe’s tragedy, Doctor Faustus, is revisited through the prism of different contemporary topics and a general atmosphere of tragicomedy, perhaps typical of postmodern times. The composer called on his well-known prosodic style (a translation in music of the intonation of speech). But he also experimented with a new style, more typical of the early 2000s and their relative aesthetic return (or stagnation), which is more “Romantic,” dedicated to the strings. This new Romanticism seems well adapted to the archaic Faust theme and its association with pain, fate, and damnation.