It’s a pretty safe bet that those who were listening to the Metropolitan Opera’s live radio broadcast of Gounod’s Faust on Saturday had a much better time than those of us who had to watch it live in HD.

Contemptuous of offering another Faust featuring Mephistopheles in red pointy shoes and feathered cap, director Des McAnuff updated the fable of the philosopher Faust who, weary of life, sells his soul to the devil for pleasures of the flesh. Our current era has no shortage of potential Faustian stand-ins who no doubt regret how they’ve lived their lives. How about Bernie Madoff as the Faust character, set on a trading floor; or Governor Rod Blagojevich as Faust, set in his office, speed-dialing donors; or steroid juicer Barry Bonds as Faust, set in the trainer’s room at the Giants’ ballpark?

Alas, McAnuff had nothing that imaginative for us. He took the predictable way out: Faust as a disillusioned nuclear physicist in 1945. John Adams was there already in Doctor Atomic, but there’s plenty of guilt to go around in the nuclear physics crowd. It’s worth another go.

So once Mephistopheles has transformed Faust into a young man through the magic of dry ice and a quick trip off stage, I assumed we would emerge in a town square in Los Alamos, New Mexico, home of the A-bomb. Mephistopheles would be disguised as some mad Air Force general, or maybe even Harry Truman on the eve of Hiroshima. Marguerite would be that cute lab technician who never gave Faust a tumble.

Instead, McAnuff sends us to France during World War I. Nuclear physics disappears for about three hours, until he brings it back with the most damnable cliché one can imagine. Go ahead and guess. Yes, a projection of a mushroom cloud.

That’s the concept, but not the end of the clichés. Faust and Mephistopheles descend through a trap door in the stage. Marguerite is saved as she walks up a staircase to heaven, bathed in the light of salvation. Mephistopheles taps his magic walking stick on a water cooler and turns it into red wine. Wow, what an effect!

A trio of committed actors might have shaken off this nonsense and made the old warhorse work its magic. However, the chemistry between tenor Jonas Kaufmann as Faust and soprano Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite was so inert that even an atomic bomb wouldn’t have warmed them up. Poplavskaya is as gloomy as a Russian winter. She barely smiled for four long hours. Her range of emotion is from weary to really weary.

Kaufmann is a handsome man, and director Robert Lepage pulled a convincing Siegmund out of him in Die Walküre at the Met in May of 2011. Here he seemed flummoxed by his icy Marguerite. Dressed in a spiffy tux, he was a refugee from a party scene in the Met’s The Great Gatsby.

René Pape knows "stolid," too. He is always acting King Marke in Tristan, no matter what the part. He made a bore of Boris Godunov at the Met. He has the perfect face for a devil with evil blue eyes, arching eyebrows, a pencil-thin mustache, slim goatee, high cheekbones, and a vaguely Mongol look. But he’s not really oily and slithering. He doesn’t move easily about the stage. One attempt at a little soft shoe was stiff. He didn’t inject any fun into the part, and what’s a devil without some mirth?

When Act 2 opens in France, we are not outside in a town square or at the fairgrounds, as Gounod asked. Maybe Los Alamos doesn’t have a town square. We are inside some sort of warehouse. The all-purpose frame for this and other scenes is a bare stage flanked by winding metal fire escapes that permit lab technicians, Faust and Mephistopheles to peer down on the action below. The bare stage became a tavern of sorts in Act 2 with a few rectangular tables, chairs, and drinking glasses. In Act 3 it became Marguerite’s house and garden with the addition of a Singer Sewing Machine. This may be perfect for an impoverished New York City Opera production, but for the Met?

Where are they going to dance, I asked myself at the start of Act 2? This Act opens with the spirited kermesse and ends with one of the greatest waltzes in all opera, Ainsi que la brise légère. Even the audience is ready to dance, but McAnuff didn’t feel it. His chorus wiggles a bit in the kermesse and, hemmed in by the tavern tables and fire escapes, attempts a bit of waltzing at the close. At this point I knew it was game over. McAnuff doesn’t hear the music he’s setting.

All of this worked pretty well on the radio. Pape is among the world’s pre-eminent basses. His Mephistopheles was rich and full. One of the two vocal highlights of the afternoon was his Act Two delivery of Le veau d’or. With this he injected the first real jolt of energy into the performance.

The other vocal highlight was Kaufmann’s ability to sustain a melting diminuendo as he pulled back after the full-throated high note at the close of Salut! Demeure chaste et pure in Act 3. Goosebumps for that one. It was impressive singing. While his voice lacks Gallic tint and seems more suited to the German repertoire, he offered a clarion Faust.

Poplavskaya has become a favorite of Peter Gelb and is singing a great deal, including Violetta in La Traviata and Elizabeth in Don Carlo. I am not sure why. Her voice is accurate if a bit pinched. She has the high notes. But it is not a distinctive voice. It has no special colors. Nor does she act with her voice. Her face, with its enormous jaw line, is a dull mask. The King of Thule ballad in Act Three (delivered while sitting at that Singer Sewing Machine) and the Jewel Song were competently done but didn’t make this Marguerite a sympathetic character. The opera can’t work if the audience doesn’t take Marguerite’s side, but Poplavskaya won’t woo an audience. She is not a generous artist.

With Kaufmann and Pape, she held her own in the glorious trio of salvation at the end, but I think that’s mostly Gounod’s doing. It was worth the wait, even in this production.

The most fully formed performance came from veteran baritone Russell Braun as Valentin, Marguerite’s brother. His big number in Act 2 — Avant de quitter ces lieux — made a good impression. Upon his return from the war in Act 4 he threw himself into the fatal duel with Faust (realistically staged), and cursed his sister with relish for her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Braun’s performance made clear what was missing from everyone else.

Michele Losier was too feminine in the pants role of Siebel, although her singing was pleasant.

The young dynamo Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the Met Orchestra in a performance that was accurate, well-paced, and often exciting. But Gounod doesn’t give the orchestra enough of interest to do so that a conductor can carry the opera. It’s not Wagner. So he could provide no antidote to McAnuff. It would have been fun to hear him conduct the Walpurgis Night ballet, but it was cut.

Surely Faust needn’t be set in the 16th-century to work. I really would like to see a production with a disgraced financier named Faust contemplating suicide if his short position doesn’t pan out. Hasn’t Wall Street already made a bargain with the devil? But McAnuff couldn’t think beyond the obvious.

What: Gounod’s Faust, Simulcast Live in HD
When: December 10, 2011
Who: Metropolitan Opera
Running time: About 4 hours and 10 minutes
Where: Metropolitan Opera House, New York
Encore performance: January 11, 2012 at 6:30 p.m. EST