Superare i generi: il Doktor Faust di Ferruccio Busoni tra sperimentazioni drammaturgiche e innesti di forme strumentali

Among the new trends of the musical theatre in the early twentieth century, Ferruccio Busoni’s work on his Doktor Faust – which remained unfinished due to the composer’s death in 1924 – stands out as a unique and intricate case. Busoni reimagined the Faust legend in terms linked to the modern idea of the unbalanced scientist who is alienated from life. The resulting character is torn between an attraction to the sheer imagination and cold rationality. The opera brings together profoundly different scenes, ranging from claustrophobic laboratories to southern sunshine, church interiors to averns, with a heterogeneity that allows even disparate musical constructs to be brought together. These deliberately elliptical snapshots are held together by the solidity of the instrumental forms, which reaffirm their centrality by gradually reviving ancient models, from dance to organ improvisation. In Doktor Faust, the interdependence of theatre and instrumental music is expressed through the reworking of a series of earlier, entirely autonomous instrumental pieces. The visionary element, that has always been central to German musical theatre, returns to prominence. Convinced that music must be closely connected with the narrative, Busoni ultimately employs a variety of ‘concrete’ sounds, such as bells, church chants, hymns, dances and liturgies. Mephistopheles himself takes on different forms in each scene, contributing to the play of disguises and rewritings that characterises the entire ‘Doktor Faust’.