MUSIC: Write if you get work

Quebec City visual wizard Robert Lepage stages the New York Metropolitan Opera’s production of Berlioz’ Damnation de Faust. Do click on the link for the audio slide show; Lepage’s work looks stunning even (especially?) if you’re not an opera fan. Better yet, go here and click on the video link. At the end, Faust and his odd new acquaintance ride off to save the maiden, but it’s a trick and he’s riding into Hell. It’s supposed to be forboding and fantastic; in Lepage’s vision, it sure is. The use of horse imagery based on Eadweard Muyrbridge’s early motion pictures (which Berlioz could have seen in person, come to think of it) is brilliant.