Abstract
M ikhail Bulgakov's love of the opera Faust verged on the fanatical. According to his sister Vera, the young Bulgakov attended no fewer than forty-one performances of Gounod's opera in Kiev. His first wife recalled that the writer often sang two arias from Faust: Mephistopheles' Le veau d'or [calf of gold] (in Russian: Na zemle ves' mir liudskoi [all people on the earth]) and Valentin's prayer.2 It is no exaggeration to say, as Ellendea Proffer does, that the French opera occupied such an important place in Bulgakov's psyche that the very image of the opera's score standing open on the piano, as it does in White Guard, symbolized security for him.3 Not surprisingly, works from throughout his career reflect Bulgakov's enduring love affair with Gounod's Faust.4
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