Robert Lepage's 'La Damnation de Faust': Opera in the ...

Robert Lepage has elevated the Metropolitan Opera's La Damnation de Faust  to a new level--four of them, actually.
The set, introduced last year and revived this season, is four stories partitioned off by five columns, a Hollywood Squares-style wall backed with 24 cubicles of drama and activity. It's a captivating innovation for modern, plugged-in theatergoers used to watching multiple screens, browsers, tabs, and windows. The cells are configured to either frame the main scene, so viewers don't have to squint at tiny figurines parading around up- or down-stage, or flood the set with action on all four levels.
And that's just the beginning. Lepage and his design group Ex Machina takes Berlioz's hybrid work (conceived as a concert piece, not an opera) many steps further. He covers each cubicle in a scrim that, when slid open, becomes a screen on which various architectural and organic video is projected. The video--fragmented and episodic--follows the progress of Berlioz's ...

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• diane mehta
• robert lepage
• ex machina
• metropolitan op
• berlioz
• la damnation de
• tech