ON THE BEAT.

The devil takes the high notes in the Met's Doktor Faust; Domingo puts his stamp on Los Angeles Opera; in San Francisco, music for women behind bars

You can bet that just about every time the Met stages an opera with a Devil character, SAMUEL RAMEY is going to turn up onstage. But Mephistopheles in Busoni's Doktor Faust is a tenor role, and this month, when the work has its Met premiere, it's ROBERT BRUBAKER who plays the Man from Down Under. The acclaimed production opened at the Salzburg Festival in 1999, starring THOMAS HAMPSON and CHRIS MERRITT. When the Met announced its casting, Hampson was on deck -- but no Merritt. Brubaker admits that he doesn't really know what happened. "All I know is that I came under consideration, and then an audition was supposed to be scheduled, so I was frantically learning the opening aria."

Perhaps Brubaker's history with the work counted for something. He sang the role of the Soldier in the New York City Opera revival back in 1992. "I think it's a wonderful work," he says. "Busoni didn't go as far out on a limb as Schoenberg. Sometimes, there are moments when it sounds too homogeneous. But once you get used to it, you hear these beautiful textures that keep changing inside."

When Brubaker did Doktor Faust at City Opera, he was still in the process of making the transition from baritone to tenor. His move up the scale was triggered by his preparations for a performance of Carmina Burana. "I was rehearsing the bits and pieces, and I could never really sing them in a proper falsetto. Then, one day, I just sang them. And I said to myself, `Hmmmmm....' I started to explore the tenor repertory, always thinking I could go back. For a while I did both baritone and tenor things. Years ago, there was a baseball player named COOKIE ROJAS, the ultimate utility player, who played every position on God's green earth. For a while at City Opera, I was the ultimate utility player. It went from there. Then I did the national tours with City Opera, which gave me my first real experience of what it meant to be a tenor. But I always thought I could go back. I wasn't unhappy as a secondary artist. I can't even say I was unhappy as a chorister. I love the theater. I'm a little sick that way."

When we spoke, Brubaker was in Paris, appearing in War and Peace, although he had yet to step onstage -- the Paris Opera had canceled the first string of performances because of a strike, centering on the issue of a thirty-five-hour workweek. The dresser's union was the first to strike, and it was subsequently joined by other factions. "Life is a little strange here," he says. "I mean, the opera house isn't closed down. Tosca is still running. They're just striking War and Peace, because it's a popular show."

The Met suffered an epidemic of cancellations this fall. SHARON SWEET's back troubles continued, forcing her to withdraw not only from the Met's Turandot last fall but from ...