Faust, Royal Opera House, London

Dance with the Devil

The boundaries between the theatre and the church are deliberately blurred in David McVicar's sumptuous staging of Gounod's Faust. Charles Edwards's design is a two-way split. The figure of Charles Gounod, "the erotic priest", looks down from the organ gallery, unruly hair, red smoking-jacket - the phantom of the opera. Donning top hat and angel's wings at the climax of the piece, he is, in every sense, lord of all he surveys. His nemesis, Mephistopheles, is the very devil of artifice and transformation - the master of ceremonies. He is, without a doubt, McVicar himself. Or, in this case, the revival director, Lee Blakeley.

The boundaries between the theatre and the church are deliberately blurred in David McVicar's sumptuous staging of Gounod's Faust. Charles Edwards's design is a two-way split. The figure of Charles Gounod, "the erotic priest", looks down from the organ gallery, unruly hair, red smoking-jacket - the phantom of the opera. Donning top hat and angel's wings at the climax of the piece, he is, in every sense, lord of all he surveys. His nemesis, Mephistopheles, is the very devil of artifice and transformation - the master of ceremonies. He is, without a doubt, McVicar himself. Or, in this case, the revival director, Lee Blakeley.

Updating the proceedings to Gounod's time, to Second Empire Paris, was a shrewd move by McVicar. Life was very much a cabaret then. The aristocracy viewed the Gothic spectacles of the Paris Opera with a reverence beyond even that accorded to nearby Notre Dame.

And, famously, the opera ballet was de rigueur. It didn't matter how appropriate it was, what purpose it served, how much of a hiatus it created in the drama - an opera wasn't an opera without its ballet. All composers bowed to this whim. Gounod's ballet for Faust comes in Act V when Mephistopheles shows his charge a vision of souls in torment - Walpurgis Night. And McVicar goes for broke.

Against a set of familiar woodland gauzes clearly marked " Giselle", a classic corps de ballet floats prettily through its paces. But the prima ballerina - like Faust's Marguerite - is pregnant, and that which was innocuously decorative turns voraciously sadistic. A tiny coffin for Marguerite's murdered child replaces the jewel box from Act III; the terrible consequence of Faust's gifts to her. It is, in a word, devilish.

The Devil, of course, has Gounod give everyone the best tunes in this opera, and the conductor, Maurizio Benini, savoured them all. His cast had, of course, to expunge the memories of the super-trio - Alagna, Gheorghiu and Terfel - who created the roles in this staging. That, in terms of sheer vocal lustre, is a tall order.

The Polish tenor Piotr Beczala didn't give us the Alagna cartwheel on regaining his youth, but he did give us a succession of ringing phrases in a voice as virile and confident as it was robust. The downside was, inevitably, the French style. Alagna's perfect French could at least feign finesse even where there was none, but Beczala had nowhere to hide. Not that he needed to. He was exciting, for sure, but whatever happened to the tenor who could really caress the lovely romance "Salut! demeure chaste et pure" and ascend to the high C in exquisite head tone?

John Tomlinson (Mephistopheles) commanded the stage when he was on it. He always does. In tiara and shimmering ball-gown, he was so indomitably queenly that you almost didn't notice the beard. But you noticed the advancing years vocally. Gounod's Devil is a seducer; he needs more persuasive colours.

So, too, does Marguerite. Elena Kelessidi is an affecting singer, but she was hope-lessly over-parted in this role. She's tending to swallow floated phrases now (the trills in her Jewel Song all but disappeared), and the top just isn't free. Nor should she be disguising her self-evident lack of weight by dangerously pushing the chest tone.

Della Jones now makes a parody of doing just that, but as the tarty Marthe Schwertlein she'll sell whatever she can, even if it's the Devil who's buying. This very East European cast was completed by a somewhat ordinary Valentin (Dalibor Jenis) and a fruitily boyish Siebel (Katija Dragojevic).

But divine decadence is what this Faust is all about. There's a touch of Bob Fosse about the Devil's entourage. For Paris, we should occasionally read Chicago.

To 28 October (020-7304 4000)