has the opera in that - or any - form been staged much?
It was memorably staged by the ENO in the 1980s - with Thomas Allen as Doktor Faust.
Talking about being worthy of the poem, didn't Wagner think Gounod's opera most unworthy?
People who criticise Gounod's
Faust for being unworthy of Goethe fail to realise that the Margarethe episode - which is what Gounod set - is the only part of the Goethe drama that is wholly original. In some ways Gounod, the pious sensualist, was the ideal composer to do justice to Goethe's concept of Margarethe. It is, in my view, a gorgeous work that does not deserve its cheesy reputation - least of all when it is performed as
opera-comique without recitative and in the proper French style.
I'm a bit surprised that nobody has mentioned Schumann's
Scenes from Faust, which IMO is a masterpiece, although its awkward form - not quite a cantata and certainly not an opera - has not helped it to get performances.