First performed in 1846, “La Damnation de Faust” remains one of Hector Berlioz’s most audacious and elusive works: neither fully opera nor oratorio, but a hybrid “dramatic legend” that defies conventional staging and genre. Drawing on Goehte’s “Faust” while filtering the story through Berlioz’s intensely Romantic imagination, the piece moves with feverish speed from pastoral lyricism to infernal spectacle, {…}