London's Royal Opera House has announced an ambitious season of opera and ballet to be screened in cinemas across the world over the coming 12 months. The programme will include five live broadcasts.

The season begins with a live screening of Gounod’s Faust on 28 September, with a cast including Vittorio Grigolo, René Pape and Angela Gheorgiu in David McVicar’s 2004 production.

Covent Garden’s splendid staging last autumn of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, which had not been seen at the house since 1906 and with Angela Gheorghiu gloriously singing opposite Jonas Kaufmann, will be October’s offering. Gheorghiu then returns again in November’s feature, Tosca. When last seen at Covent Garden, the intensity of her second act exchanges with Bryn Terfel’s Scarpia had echoes of the incomparable Callas-Gobbi pairing, and the stellar casting of Gheorghiu, Terfel and Kaufmann will come together again for this filming with two sold-out performances under Antonio Pappano in July.

July’s much anticipated Covent Garden premiere of Massenet’s Cendrillon, with Joyce DiDonato in the title role and Alice Coote as her Prince Charming, will be shown in cinemas in January, and next season’s first new production, Puccini’s Il Trittico, being performed complete by the Royal Opera for the first time since 1965, when Tito Gobbi doubled up in Il tabarro and Gianni Schicchi, will screen in February.

Meanwhile, Covent Garden’s latest revival, Macbeth, which opened last night with Pappano conducting Simon Keenlyside in the lead role in Verdi’s sombre opera with the jolly choruses, will be broadcast live to more than 450 cinemas around the world on 13 June.

Antony Craig