18 - ‘Devilishly good’: Rudolf Volz's Rock Opera Faust and ‘Event Culture’

Summary

The Musical is the only form of music theatre that consistently attracts audiences to theatres without public subvention. Since the 1980s there has been a global commercial ‘musical boom’ from which Germany poses no exception. With productions of new musicals (especially those by Andrew Lloyd Webber) it was possible to have venues sold out for years with one and the same piece. Towards the end of the century this boom caught up with Goethe's Faust: the German mathematician turned free-lance composer Rudolf Volz (born 1956 in Ulm) compiled the lyrics and wrote the music for Faust − Die Rockoper [Faust − The Rock Opera]: twenty-five numbers based on text from Goethe's drama. The piece was first performed in 1997 in Ulm by a ‘free group of artists from Southern Germany’ with experience of rock music and recorded on CD. Opening in 2005, a professional management company (the Berlin ‘Event and Management Agency’ Manthey Event) brought the show to different theatres. Faust − Die Rockoper is one of several early twenty-first-century musical realizations of Goethe's Faust. It has already attracted some scholarly attention, albeit only among English-language Faust scholarship. In his 2004 article on Faust as rock opera, Paul M. Malone gives an overview of the work, its musical background and compositions. In another article he places Volz's production within several adaptations of the Faust theme or ‘Faustian Rock Musicals’. The following will therefore focus on aspects of marketing, performance and reception. It is particularly in these areas that the way in which national myths are popularized for the benefit of mass audiences is revealed.

The production announcement promises a ‘Spektakel zwischen Rockkonzert, Musical und Volkstheater’ [spectacle between rock concert, musical and popular theatre]. In an attempt to reach a young audience, promotional videos on YouTube were part of the advertising. Faust II − Die Rockoper swiftly followed. It had its premiere at the Landestheater in Marburg in 2003. The music was produced as a set of Audio CDs (Part 1 1997, Part 2 2004, issued together in 2007) and Part I of the show was also released on DVD (2007).