By Cheryl North [Mercury News, 7 June 2010]

SAN FRANCISCO — "Short-term gain; long-term pain" — a few economists might be bandying about that pithy phrase these days. But these words were also irreverently buzzing in my brain during San Francisco Opera's sumptuous three-hour-plus production of Charles Gounod's "Faust" Saturday at the War Memorial Opera House. While these six little words might get to the moral heart of the timeless Faust story, they do not even begin to characterize Gounod's glorious music.