It is a move that will take him from the hustle of Hollywood to the leafy lanes of East Sussex, from Tinseltown to the rarefied environs of Glyndebourne. Sam Mendes, director of American Beauty and Road to Perdition, is to try his hand at directing opera.
The former Donmar Warehouse artistic director will take on Mozart's Don Giovanni in 2010, a coup for the opera festival, and the result of eight years of wooing.
"We've met once a year for at least the past five years to discuss the possibility of his directing with us," said Glyndebourne general director David Pickard, who has fought in recent years to shed the festival of its fusty, just-for-toffs image.
"He has always wanted to direct opera, and he has always wanted to do it at Glyndebourne: I think it is our reputation for looking after the people we work with. For him it is the ideal way to embark on opera: other houses may not give him the same level of care and attention as we would."
Mendes has had great success with musical theatre in the past. His opening production at the Donmar was Sondheim's Assassins; he also directed Company there and his Cabaret was a big hit on Broadway, prompting his hiring as the director of the 1999 film American Beauty, for which he won the Oscar for best director.
Pickard said he had also been impressed with Mendes's sensitivity in using music in his straight theatre productions, citing his Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya, again at the Donmar. "It's one of the things I look for in directors of straight theatre," said Pickard. "With Mendes, you can see that his use of music is integral to the atmosphere he is building."
In a curious twist, Mendes's successor at the Donmar, Michael Grandage, is also to make his opera directing debut at Glyndebourne during the same season as Mendes.
Grandage, who has been credited with developing the huge success and cachet of the Donmar, is responsible for hit productions such as this year's John Gabriel Borkman, and Othello, starring Ewan McGregor and Chiwetel Ejiofor, which opened on Monday.
He too has an impeccable pedigree in musical theatre, with his Guys and Dolls a hit in London and New York.
Grandage is to take on Britten's Billy Budd; Pickard said that hiring two of the most fashionable British directors around, both from the same theatrical stable, was coincidence rather than a deliberate move to exploit the Donmar's chic.
The idea of Don Giovanni had come from Glyndebourne, rather than Mendes, but he was "intrigued and fascinated" by the opera and strongly attracted by the Da Ponte libretto, said Pickard. The festival's music director, Vladimir Jurowski, is to conduct. Rising star Kate Royal will take the role of Donna Elvira; Canadian baritone Gerard Finley will sing Don Giovanni.
