BAGHDAD -- Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami is to try his adept hand at opera. The award-winning director plans to stage Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" at July's prestigious Aix-en-Provence music festival in southern France.
"This is a new experience that moves me highly," says Kiarostami, who won the 1997 Palme d'Or at Cannes for his "Taste of Cherry."
Festival directors said the production would be staged eight times between July 4 and 19.
French baroque conductor Christophe Rousset will take charge of musical direction while London's English National Opera is co-producing.
"I have to say that the first time we discussed it I had decided not to accept, that this was not my work, that I would not be able to do it," the Iranian director told reporters.
Over time, however, he had come to realize that Mozart's 1790 opera about love had greater universal meaning.
"We all make music, we just change instruments," he adds. "Now that I've changed I've come to realize that it's not more difficult than film.
"There are many constraints in opera, but they keep you on the rails."
Kiarostami's next pic, "The Certified Copy," starring Juliette Binoche will be his first feature made outside his native country. Pic is set to start shooting in March in Tuscany.
Italian producer Angelo Barbagallo's Rome-based Bibi Film will co-produce the Iranian's first work toplining a Western star, which Gaul's MK2 is producing.
Binoche will play a French art gallery owner who falls for an older novelist, played by French thesp Sami Frey, as they travel around the Chianti countryside.
Binoche spent time in Iran with Kiarostami last month to prepare for her role, irritating local pols who are not pleased that the Iranian helmer cast Binoche, calling it "cultural destruction."
"Certified Copy" will be Kiarostami's first feature since "Ten," shot in 2002, which was about women in Tehran.
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