Hector Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust was hanging about for several decades -- and not gathering heaps of respect -- before the Metropolitan Opera got around to staging it in 1906. That was the first and also last time it was seen there until now. Canadian director Robert Lepage has installed a reconceived version of the technologically intricate production he initially mounted for the Saito Kinen Festival and the Opera National de Paris, and loyal opera patrons will undoubtedly conclude the wait was worth it.



Long impressed with Gerard de Nerval's French translation of Goethe's Faust, Berlioz collaborated with Almire Gandonniere in 1845 on a libretto that could hardly be called the [...]