Des McAnuff directs Faust in London

Des McAnuff, artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, makes his London opera debut this Saturday with the English National Opera.

McAnuff will direct singers Toby Spence and Melody Moore in a production of Charles Gounod's Faust at the Coliseum, the ENO's London home.

French composer Gounod created a 19th-century romantic opera based on Goethe's story of the man who sells his soul to the devil so he can be young again and woo the lovely Marguerite.

Toronto-raised McAnuff is a veteran of musical theatrewho has helmed Broadway productions like Big River, The Who's Tommy and Tony Award winner Jersey Boys. He directed As You Like It and The Tempest at Stratford this season, and his Jersey Boys continues to run in both New York and London.

Faust is not McAnuff's first opera. In 2007, he directedWozzeck for the San Diego Opera.

He plans to update Faust to the 1950s and portray the main character as a disenchanted physicist horrified by the atomic bomb.

"Years ago I heard a story about a physicist visiting Nagasaki and deciding never to practise physics again, and that had a very profound effect on me ... so it seemed to me a very good framework," McAnuff said in an interview with Reuters. He added that the story will remain true to Goethe and Gounod.

McAnuff said opera remains new territory for him, but he believes his skill set will see him through the production.

Faust will have nine performances with the ENO and McAnuff will take the production on to the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

He also is signed up to directe the opera Senna for the Met, about Brazilian Formula 1 world champion Ayrton Senna da Silva, who was killed in a crash during the 1994 Grand Prix.