IN “La Damnation de Faust,” even Robert Lepage’s dazzling high-tech production cannot overshadow the Metropolitan Opera’s towering musical performance of this masterpiece by Hector Berlioz.
The composer conceived this version of the legend about an elderly philosopher who sells his soul to the devil as an almost plotless series of scenes. Lepage, whose credits include Cirque du Soleil’s Las Vegas production “Kà,” illustrates the story with dreamlike stage pictures involving dancers, acrobats and video imagery swarming across the five-story set.
Some of the effects are complex and flashy, as when a squadron of soldiers march up a wall of windblown grass, then tumble in slow motion toward mourning women. In a more subtle moment, Faust lazily drifts in a boat with computer-generated reflections rippling below.
This wizardry expertly harmonizes with a purely acoustic musical performance. In an era when even off-Broadway musicals are heavily miked, conductor James Conlon needed no artificial enhancement to project a terrifying wall of noise for the climactic “Ride to the Abyss” and “Pandemonium” scenes. Yet he reined in the virtuoso orchestra and chorus to transparent purity for the ethereal finale depicting the heroine’s ascent into heaven.
As Faust, Ramón Vargas won sympathy with his slightly goofy stage presence and sweet lyric tenor. He soared easily to the high B’s and C sharp in the love duet, though the defiant “Invocation to Nature” aria could use more muscle.
If Olga Borodina (Marguerite) is a visual throwback to the zaftig opera divas of old, she also boasts a golden-age voice. She refined her mezzo-soprano to a shimmering thread of tone for “Autrefois un roi de Thulé,” then sustained a slow, mournful tempo for “D’amour l’ardente flamme.”
A more problematic performance was the Mephistopheles of Ildar Abdrazakov. He’s a good-looking man who moves well onstage, and his rough-hewn bass-baritone projected well. But his singing remained generalized, with the seductive aria “Voici des roses” sounding no more delicate than the raunchy “Song of the Flea.”
