Goold Makes Opera Debut in ENO\’s New Season

The English National Opera has announced its 2009/10 season, which includes the opera directing debut of Rupert Goold (pictured), a new production from promenade specialists Punchdrunk and the continuation of the ENO’s association with the Young Vic.

Goold – the Olivier award winning director of Macbeth, Six Characters in Search of an Author, King Lear and Oliver! – will direct Puccini’s Turandot at the Coliseum, opening on 8 October 2009. Turandot, which was unfinished at the time of Puccini’s death in 1924, is taken from the Persian collection of stories The Book of One Thousand and One Days and centres on a young Prince’s efforts to melt the heart of a man-hating ‘ice princess’.

The new season, announced at a press conference this morning, marks the fourth collaboration between the ENO and Young Vic, with Fiona Shaw returning after her 2008 production of Vaughan Williams’ Riders to the Sea to direct Henze’s Elegy for Young Lovers. The opera, premiered in 1961, revolves around a poet who devours those around him to nourish his art and ego. It opens on 24 April 2010, running for seven performances.

Elsewhere, Punchdrunk, under the directorship of Felix Barrett, will present an as yet untitled new production, which promises to continue the company’s trademark “unique and visual approach”. Punchdrunk’s recent credits include Faust, which played for six months in a decommissioned printing factory in Wapping, and the highly acclaimed adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death at the BAC.

Forming the “backbone” of the season are new productions of 20th century operas, including Philip Glass’ Satyagraha, David McVicar’s The Turn of the Screw as well as Elegy for Young Lovers. For further details, see our dedicated opera section, www.whatsonstage.com/opera.

– by Theo Bosanquet