Terry Gilliam, Mike Figgis make opera debuts at ENO

You can sometimes hear complaints about English National Opera – they just grab the most fashionable names from the theatre, say the company's critics, and stick them in opera and hope for the best. (Rupert "Enron" Goold's 2009 Turandot was the one that really split opinion – some found it wayward but with flashes of brilliance, others felt it proved that the only really successful opera directors are those who are primarily musicians.) For next season , announced today, at least one can see that ENO are being consistent – they are forging a distinctive identity based on the idea of hooking talent out of other artforms and using that as a way of tempting new audiences into the London Coliseum. And certainly, I'll be dying to see how Terry Gilliam envisions Berlioz's Damnation of Faust next May – as well as what Mike Figgis makes of Lucrezia Borgia in January. I daresay there will be some who'll deprecate ENO's obsession with opera neophytes. But these two... well, while there's every chance their productions will flop (there always is – opera's tough like that) I'll be intrigued to see what they come up with. Gilliam's sense of spectacle and of the extraordinary surely bodes well; he is an "operatic" film director. As for Figgis, who meticulously scores his own films, no one could accuse him of not being deeply musical. In fact, I think the ENO season is a pretty exciting one. Here's a quick run-down of my highlights. September: Gounod's Faust, directed by Des McAnuff, conducted by Edward Gardner. September: Janacek's The Makropoulos Case, starring Amanda Roocroft (be great to see her in this role – one of my favourite operas ever). November: Making his operatic debut, Rufus Norris (Festen) directs Don Giovanni, with Iain Paterson and Brindley Sherratt. Kyrill Karabits (making a reputation for himself in Bournemouth) conducts. November: Alexander Raskatov's A Dog's Heart, directed by Complicite co-founder Simon McBurney. January 2011: Mike Figgis makes his operatic debut with Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia May: Terry Gilliam takes on Berlioz – The Damnation of Faust. With British rising stars Christine Rice and Christopher Purves (I think Purves is fantastic – superb actor. Really like Rice, too) May: Christopher Alden's production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream June: Edward Gardner conducts Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. Director is Russian Dmitri Tcherniakov June: Nico Muhly's new opera (can't wait for this - and what a challenge for a composer not yet out of his 20s to test himself in London's biggest theatre. It could go very wrong. Or very right)