VIDEO: Get A First Look At LA DAMNATION DE FAUST at The Met

In the video watch Elīna Garanča sings an excerpt from Marguerite's Act IV aria in the final dress rehearsal. Conductor: Edward Gardner.

Berlioz's compelling take on the Faust legend returns for the first time in a decade, with an ideal lineup of stars. High-flying tenors Bryan Hymel and Michael Spyres sing the doomed and besotted Faust, opposite dazzling mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča as the forsaken Marguerite and bass Ildar Abdrazakov as the malevolent Méphistophélès. Edward Gardner conducts.

World Premiere: Opéra-Comique, Paris, 1846. Berlioz's magnificent exploration of the Faust legend is a unique operatic journey. The visionary French composer was inspired by a bold translation of Goethe's dramatic poem Faust and produced a monumental and bewildering musical work that, like the masterpiece on which it's based, defies easy categorization. Conceived at various times as a free-form oratorio and as an opera, La Damnation de Faust is both intimate and grandiose, exquisitely beautiful and blaringly rugged, hugely ambitious, and presciently cinematic.

Berlioz's score is as fragmented, wild, and imaginative as the dramatic poem it depicts. Yet for all the massive effects and unusual yet transcendent moments that have impressed (or offended) critics and audiences from Berlioz's time to our own, the opera achieves some of its greatest moments through daring restraint.

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