One of the Metropolitan Opera’s popular open rehearsals will take place on November 4 with the final dress rehearsal of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust, Robert Lepage’s unusual production of a work that was last performed at the Met in 1907. With Met stars Marcello Giordani as Faust, Susan Graham as Marguerite, and John Relyea as Méphistophélès and conducted by James Levine, the production utilizes new theatrical technology to present Berlioz’s hallucinatory vision of the Faust tale.
The second in a series of open rehearsals this season that are supported by Agnes Varis, a managing director of the Met’s Board of Directors, and her husband, Karl Leichtman, the dress rehearsal begins at 11:00 am; the doors to the house open at 10:30 am. Three thousand free tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis at the Met box office, beginning at noon on Sunday, November 2.
The Open House will include a panel discussion led by Mr. Lepage, who is known for combining new theatrical innovations such as motion control and interactive scenery together with more traditional theatrical techniques. Lepage, who is making his debut at the Met, regards this production as a creative launching pad for the new Ring Cycle which he is directing at the Met, beginning in 2010.
The premiere of the new production of Faust opens on Friday, November 7 and runs into December. It will be broadcast as one of the Met’s award-winning live high-definition transmissions into movie theaters on Saturday, November 22.
The Faust Open House is among a number of free public events offered by the Met this season. In September, the company presented a free concert of the Verdi Requiem in tribute to
Luciano Pavarotti, as well as transmitting its opening-night gala performance onto multiple screens in Times Square and at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus. In October, several thousand high school and college students were invited to the final dress rehearsal of Doctor Atomic, the season’s first Open House, which also featured an onstage question-and-answer session with composer
John Adams.
The next Open House will be on Friday, February 27 for
Mary Zimmerman’s new production of Bellini’s La Sonnambula, starring Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez.
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