The English National Opera 2009/10 season, announced earlier today, features 12 new productions, collaborations with the Young Vic and Punchdruck, and the London opera debut of director Rupert Goold.
Goold joins directors Katie Mitchell, Daniel Kramer, Deborah Warner, David McVicar, Fiona Shaw, Penny Woolcock, Catherine Maltifano, David Alden and Jonathan Miller in a season described today as fresh and relevant and aimed at audiences with an appetite for the new and challenging.
Collaborations are high on the agenda for 2009/10, with groundbreaking theatre companies opening and completing the season. Catalan company La Fura dels Baus’s production of modern opera Le Grand Macabre runs in London for six performances in September, while a newly commissioned work will be premiered in collaboration with Punchdrunk at an as yet undiscovered location in 2010.
The work between the Young Vic and ENO, which began with 2008’s Punch And Judy and continues with After Dido later this month, continues in 2010, when Fiona Shaw is to direct Hans Werner Henze’s Elegy For Young Lovers at the Waterloo venue. Mitchell, who directs After Dido, also returns to ENO in 2010 to stage the first new production of Mozart’s Greek tragedy Idomeneo since 1962.
Goold, whose recent theatrical successes include Macbeth, No Man’s Land and Six Characters In Search Of An Author, and who directs Time And The Conways at the National Theatre next month, makes his ENO debut with Puccini’s Turandot. The opera, he admitted via video at today’s launch, piqued his interest due to its capacity for “high end horror”.
Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre is to perform The Rite Of Spring at the Coliseum as part of a double bill with a new version of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle directed by Kramer who was today described by ENO Music Director Edward Gardner as “verging on being a genius”.
ENO marks the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death by staging a version of Messiah directed by Deborah Warner in November 2009, starring an all-British cast of Sophie Bevan, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, John Mark Ainsley and Brindley Sherratt.
Among the season’s other new productions are The Elixir Of Love and Katya Kabanova, both of which have previously been staged in the US, but are new to ENO, Malfitano’s version of Tosca and The Pearl Fishers, directed by Doctor Atomic’s Penny Woolcock. The season’s revivals include Rigoletto, The Turn Of The Screw, Lucia Di Lammermoor and Satyagraha.
Speaking at today’s launch, Loretta Tomasi, Chief Executive of ENO, described the organisation as being “probably in the best place it’s ever been”, referring specifically to creating new work, collaborating with other companies, expanding its broadcast and online creativity and to its current economic outlook.
MA