English National Opera Starts Cinema Broadcasts with David Alden's 'Peter Grimes,' Terry Gilliam's Berlioz

With the number of opera companies, theater troupes, ballets corps and orchestras now launching their own cinecast services, one could almost launch a dedicated chain of cinemas--showing nothing but high arts events. The latest to join the Met, Glyndebourne, Teatro Real in Madrid, the Berlin Philharmonic, Covent Garden and so many others is English National Opera. Their initiative, called ENO Screen, will launch in spring 2014.

Two productions have been announced for the cinema treatment. The first, David Alden's Peter Grimes, is one of the company's genuinely stunning theatrical achievements, as fierce and vivid as the torrential storm Benjamin Britten depicts in Act I. The company's music director, Edward Gardner, conducts with Stuart Skelton as Grimes and Elza van den Heever as Ellen Orford.

Then in June, Terry Gilliam returns to ENO for Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini. The film director and Monty Python member scored a huge success some years ago with his staging of the same composer's The Damnation of Faust, and this new production is his eagerly awaited follow-up. Michael Spyres stars in the title role.

The cinema projects are a partnership with AltiveMedia and will be produced by Serpent Productions. The director will be Grammy-nominated Andy Morahan (whom the press release bills as an MTV director, which seems slightly odd for the very different world of opera) and the producer will be Dione Orrom.

So, will ENO's shows find an audience? Well, everything they sing is in English. That's a boast that rivals generally can't make. Except, err, in the case of Peter Grimes.

Everyone does that one in English.