MUMBAI, Jan o4 (bdnews24.com/reuters) - A leading Bollywood director known for his lavish operatic sets and musicals has been signed by famed French opera house Theater du Chatelet to create a stage production, an Indian newspaper reported on Thursday.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali's last period film 'Devdas', a story of a Bengali aristocrat doomed in love, was replete with grandiose sets and theatrical music, and the filmmaker said it was this movie that prompted the French company to approach him.
"It's an honor," Bhansali told the Times of India newspaper.
"It's a very exhilarating and exciting prospect to use my operatic vision on stage."
There was no immediate comment from the Paris-based theater.
The Indian filmmaker will join the likes of Yimou Zhang, director of 'House of Flying Daggers,' and film director and actor Woody Allen who have also been invited by the theater to produce operas, the paper said.
Bhansali is one of Bollywood's most sought after directors after three of his four films, including 'Black' --- an adaptation of Helen Keller's life made in 2005 -- became hits.
He took his time to agree to directing an opera, the newspaper reported, because he wanted to be sure about the move as stage production was a completely different discipline.
"I'm already very nervous. It's a very lavish production, involving a huge cast and production values," the young director said.
The story of the as yet untitled opera is an old literary work by a French author of the 1920s. The newspaper did not name the writer.
The production will keep Bhansali in Paris for three months from January till March 2008 when the opera goes on stage.
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