Former Python and cult film-maker Terry Gilliam makes his opera directing debut with Berlioz's dazzlingly kaleidoscopic take on Goethe's Faust, setting the old legend of the ivory-tower intellectual who forfeits his soul for love. ENO's Olivier Award-winning Music Director, Edward Gardner, who conducted this season's opening production of Gounod's Faust, returns to conduct Berlioz's radically different treatment of the same story.

Christine Rice, whose performance as Suzuki in ENO's 2009 Madam Butterfly, was described as ?luxury casting' by both The Times and The Guardian, now steps centre stage as the seduced and abandoned Marguerite, while the mocking, mischief-making devil, Mephistopheles, is sung by Christopher Purves, last seen as the sleazy sidekick Tony in Richard Jones's 2008 staging of Pagliacci.

News: Published on Thursday 5 February 2011 at 02:43