Former Python and cult film-maker Terry Gilliam makes his opera directing debut with The Damnation Of Faust, Berlioz’s dazzlingly kaleidoscopic take on Goethe’s Faust.

English National Opera’s Laurence Olivier Award-winning Music Director, Edward Gardner, who also conducted the opening production of ENO 2010/11 season, 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 at the London Coliseum as the sleazy sidekick Tony in Richard Jones’s 2008 staging of Pagliacci.

Learn more about London operas within the West End.