Enjoying the senseless pursuit

When she was in her seventies, the story goes, Marlene Dietrich was sitting in a restaurant when a photographer who had followed her career with his camera entered. "What's the matter with you," she yelled across the busy room. "In the good old days you used to take much better pictures of me." The photographer quipped with a smirk: "Because I was younger then."

This, in a nutshell, is the gist of Charles Gounod's "Faust," which is being staged this month by the New Israeli Opera, under the direction of Fourny Paul-Emile - the elusive quest for youth. The 19th-century composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, who was asked first to put "Faust" to music, declined, abhorring the idea of spoiling Goethe's lofty text. On the other hand, Jules Barbier and Michel Carre, Gounod's librettists, had no qualms about extracting from the heavily philosophical German work a story that every middle-aged man could easily identify with. Mephistopheles comes along, offering money and power, but Faust wants something else: "Je veux la jeunesse" - "I long for youth," sings every Faust since the opera premiered 150 years ago at the Theatre Lyrique in Paris, leaving no man in the hall indifferent.

Forget about the men, though. They can always take solace in the truism that women prefer a wrinkled Clint Eastwood over a young stud (well, let's hope that is true). But what about the women? They are the main victims of this senseless pursuit, as well as the primary target of today's formidable "youth industry," with its misleading claim, nah, blatant lie: "anti-aging."

Along those lines, an idea comes to mind. Instead of "Faust" being performed in the theater, it should staged in the airport's duty-free area, with heavily made-up saleswomen playing the girls in the chorus. Or, better yet, instead of the fatal encounter between Faust and Mephistopheles taking place in the aging doctor's study, it should be staged at La Clinic in Montreux, Switzerland, where the famous Dr. Michel Pfulg does miracles by turning old celebs into young people again. The program for this version of the opera, by the way, should be sold together with a "replumping anti-wrinkle serum" (NIS 1,000 for 40 ml).

The pursuit of the fountain of youth has long drawn the attention of the best writers. Thomas Mann, in his "Death in Venice," tells us how Gustav von Aschenbach (Mann himself?), while sailing to Venice, encounters a young dandy who turns out not to be so young. Rather, he is an elderly man with a red wig and false teeth, his fingers laden with heavy rings, surrounded by a bunch of bacchanalian youths. Von Aschenbach is filled with disgust over this vulgar conduct. Later, however, he himself is enchanted by a young, handsome Polish boy, Tadzio - so much so, that in his attempt to win his heart, he dyes his own hair black to look younger. In chasing the boy, his spirit may still be young, but his aging body betrays him.

Oscar Wilde, in "The Picture of Dorian Gray," invented a brilliant trick to escape the claws of cruel time. When painter Basil Hallward did his portrait of the handsome Dorian, the youth made a naive wish: that signs of his aging would never show on his face, but rather only in the picture. His wish was miraculously granted, but only for a while, because these kind of stories never have a happy end.

It was the great William Shakespeare who, better than anyone else, mocked this pathetic phenomenon. He puts the following words in the mouth of the Lord Chief Justice, in "Henry IV" (Part II), when the gross Sir John Falstaff is brought before him: "Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly?" If this is not enough, then the judge adds insult to injury: "Is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single?" Then comes the coup de grace: "Every part about you blasted with antiquity and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!"

Yet we keep trying, all of us, to hold on to our youth, and recently we received some great assistance from New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who wrote that "59 is the new 30." Why is that? Friedman spoke with a middle-aged golfer, who admitted he couldn't physically keep up with the young ones but, on the other hand, he had greater experience, and was seasoned by lessons he had learned from his defeats.

Sever Plocker of Yedioth Ahronoth obviously loved that story, and probably spoke for many when he wrote fondly in his column: "Thanks, Tom."

So middle-aged men will continue to dye their hair, pull their bellies in when in public, and dump their wives and the mothers of their children for young chicks. Women, for their part, will flock to health clubs, torture themselves with murderous diets, wear their daughters' clothes and pretend to believe the nonsense spouted by beauty-products saleswomen.

There is, however, another way. One can just relax and watch and listen to "Faust," one of the most popular works in the history of opera. No wonder that in the 1950s, opera house managers used to say: "If the season stinks, scrap all further performances and bring in 'Faust.'"

Why does the crowd keep filling the opera houses? Surely people know that 59 is 59, not 30. But if one wants to be lured into some disillusionment, there's nothing like doing it to the beautiful music of Charles Gounod.