(AFP) – Jan 23, 2008

PARIS (AFP) — Iran's award-winning film director Abbas Kiarostami is set for a maiden try at opera, staging Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" at next July's pre-eminent Aix-en-Provence music festival in southern France.

"This is a new experience that moves me highly," said Kiarostami, winner of the 1997 Palme d'Or at Cannes for his "Taste of Cherry".

The festival said the production would be staged eight times between July 4 and 19 with French baroque conductor Christophe Rousset in charge of the musical direction and London's English National Opera co-producing.

The opera is to run in London later.

"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 said.

But bit by bit he had come to realise that the 1790 opera about love had a universal meaning.

"We all make music, we just change instruments," he added. "Now that I've changed I've come to realise that it's not more difficult than film."

"There are many constraints in opera, but they keep you on the rails," he said.

The auteur is working on a new picture "The Certified Copy" and has cast French actress Juliette Binoche as a gallery owner enjoying a brief encounter with a British writer. It will be his first feature since 2002's "Ten".

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