Robert Lepage came to the Met on Friday and brought along a big bag of technological tricks. The object of his potential illumination: Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust, an ecstatic yet static légende dramatique that hardly requires special effects.

Never mind. Lepage has given us special effects in excelsis. Carl Fillion’s set is a multi-level scaffold divided into symmetrical panels and connected with catwalks and ladders. Projections – some entailing conventional video and some controlled by interactive sonic stimuli – deliver would-be poetic images (waves, birds, foliage, clouds ...). Characters fly and float on wires like Peter Pan, clamber about precarious structures at odd angles, pop out of traps. There is much posing, prancing, dancing and acrobatting. Abstraction and stylisation sustain a tenuous coexistence with realism and pageantry.