Canadian avant-garde director, Robert Lepage will direct Hector Berlioz's opera, Damnation of Faust as the centerpiece of the 1999 Saito Kinen Festival in Matsumoto, Japan. Performance will take place Sept. 1 - 8. Tenor Giuseppe Sabbatini will be featured as Faust, Jose van Dam as Mephistopheles, Susan Graham as Marguerite, and Clayton Brainerd as Brander.
Lepage's works include The Dragon's Trilogy, Needles and Opium, the acclaimed Hiroshima epic The Seven Streams of the River Ota, his solo Elsinore, and Geometry of Miracles. Miracles will make its U.S. Debut at BAM, Nov. 30-Dec. 5. It examines 30 years of Frank Lloyd Wright's tumultuous life and juxtaposes it with the life of Russian spiritualist, Georgi Gurdjieff.
-- By Sean McGrath