La Damnation de Faust, Op. 24

The full work follows Faust in four parts. Part I sets him alone on the Hungarian plain, where a distant march grows into the full-blooded Hungarian March, all brass and snare drum. Part II moves to his study, then to a rowdy tavern song scene, then to a moonlit spot where sprites lull Faust to sleep: the woodwinds turn skittish and unsettled in the Minuet of the Will-o'-the-Wisps, then hushed and glowing in the Dance of the Sylphs, as Faust dreams of a woman he has not yet met. Part III brings that woman, Marguerite, to the stage, with a folk-like ballad and a hushed love scene. Part IV is the reckoning: Marguerite alone and abandoned, then Faust's frantic bargain with Mephistopheles, a thundering ride to the abyss with galloping strings and shouted, invented demon-language, and a quiet epilogue in which Marguerite's soul is welcomed into heaven. Many orchestras, including this one, perform only the three purely instrumental numbers as a concert suite, which gives a first-time listener the Hungarian March's swagger and the two sprite dances' delicacy without the surrounding drama.

Berlioz adapted the Faust legend from Goethe, working partly from a French translation, and called the result a 'legende dramatique' rather than an opera, since it was built for the concert hall, not the stage. He conducted the premiere himself at the Paris Opera-Comique on December 6, 1846, and it was a disaster: the hall was half empty, critics found it shapeless, and the losses from paying for the performances himself left him badly in debt. He later called the public's indifference one of the deepest wounds of his career. The piece was largely neglected until a concert performance in Paris in 1877 finally won it an audience, and it has been a staple of the choral-orchestral repertoire ever since. The Hungarian March, written to please Hungarian audiences on an 1846 tour, became a popular standalone concert piece almost immediately, well before the rest of the score caught on.