The video is Faust's Aria and it begins at 49:19. This is in English not French, obviously I hope. This isn't the worlds best, but it ain't bad for a kid from Kentucky who has no idea what he is doing. I guess singing Kansas songs till 3:00 in the morning all those years as a closet musician wasn't so bad after all. This is a very rough video of a rehearsal of "Faust" by Charles Gounod with the Western Kentucky University Opera and Theater Department production in the iconic and wonderfully acoustical Van Meter Auditorium in January, 1983. Every second singing in that theater is a joy. The set didn't get completed until the day before the premiere. It was my first major role in an opera and I was still 22 years old at the time. I turned 23 in June 1983. Obviously we are all very young and other than the Stephen Foster Story two years before, and Carmen, El Remendado, two years prior, I had no experience or knowledge of acting. So, I am very stiff here.

The major roles here are sung by: Old Faust - Dr. Virgil Hale, Director of Opera and Voice professor at WKU, Marguerite, Sherri Phelps, Méphistophélès, Tony Conyer, Valentine, Ted Barr. I sang one other production of Faust in Gelsenkirchen, Germany in 1999 in French, I believe. I wished I could have done more productions of Faust, as well as Gounod's Romeo and Juliet, but it never came to pass. My voice sounds best in French. The other French roles I did were Bizet's Carmen, Don Jose, Massenet's Manon - Des Grieux, and Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann - Hoffmann.