Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1898 — ‘Faust.” [ARTICLE]

‘Faust.”

On Thursday eve, Nov. 3rd, the stage at Ellis’ Opera House will be given to an elaborate production of Faust by Porter J. White acsompanied by Miss Olga Verne and Frank MacDonald, supported by an excellent company. The beginning of the fifth act shows us Ftrrrat and Mephisto toilfully climbing the steep rocks and yawning chasms of the Peak of the Brocken in the Harz mountains where, according to the German legend, the witches and war-locks meet on Walpurgis night (the thirteenth of April) to hold their yearly festivities. The night grows darker and darker: the moon is in its last quarter and gives but little light. They climb higher and higher, the trees and rocks and distant cliffs take on wondrously fantastic shapes in the dim light of the dying moon. Only the hooting of the owls and the far away lonely cry of the night hawk breaks the solemn stillness: strange shapes crawl to and fro and weird snake-like forms seem to writhe and try to clasp the wanderer in their horrible embrace. At midnight a mighty tempest arises and the witches gather from far and near to their unholy festival. During the truly horrifying scene that follows Mephisto shows Faust the never failing “Punishment of Evil” and the curtain falls with terrorstricken Faust writhing in the Evil one’s grasp. A perfeot storm of electric fire descends amid which the imps and witches are seen revelling in their fiendish merriment.