Abbas Kiarostami, the distinguished Iranian film-maker, poet, photographer and now opera director, is sitting in a sweltering office in Paris wishing that he was in London. His production of Così fan tutte had its premiere last July at Aix-enProvence and opened at English National Opera yesterday, yet he cannot get into the country to oversee rehearsals because he has been denied a visa by the British Embassy in Tehran.

“I’ve travelled around the world for 20 years and I’m used to the bureaucratic process, but this was unheard of. There were many more demands. I had to give my fingerprints twice in a week. I was asked to open a bank account with a deposit to pay for my return journey. I did all that. I provided the letters of invitation they asked for. My file was complete. And then they said they were not, after all, going to give me a visa. They were very rude. They said, ‘We know who you are, but no one there knows you. We’re not going to make an exception for you.’

"I still don’t understand what happened. It was Kafkaesque. So I made a decision, which I know was probably impulsive and probably wrong, but which was to give it up. Yes, the ambassador intervened, but by then it was too late. I’d made up my mind. It was painful renouncing the chance to go to England. Even now I wish I hadn’t been hurt and had been strong enough to resist, but I know that if it happened again I would make the same choice.”

Kiarostami is a refined and elegant man of 68 with a romantic’s heart and an intellectual’s brain, and the creative conflict between these two can illuminate in unexpected ways. He must have been driven to fury at the time, and I imagine that he can make a powerful nuisance of himself if he wants to, but now he sits in his black T-shirt, khaki jacket and dark glasses, more saddened and resigned than enraged by the whole affair.

Had the embassy officials done a little research they would have discovered that Kiarostami is one of the greats of modern cinema. Although he is not well known by the general public and has never worked in Hollywood, he has made more than 40 films, won numerous coveted prizes and awards, and is acclaimed by Akira Kurosawa, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jean-Luc Godard and many others as one of the greatest film-makers working today. He is also a celebrated photographer, with a London exhibition at Purdy Hicks gallery.

Clearly Kiarostami has neither the need nor the inclination to make a big melodramatic stink, as other, less assured, movie types might have done. He says he is managing fine at this inconvenient distance because when Così was in production in Aix, ENO’s associate director, Elaine Tyler-Hall, spent six months with him there observing the opera taking shape. “We exchange e-mails every day. She knows my vision very well. In fact” — his smooth face creases into a grin — “I remember that at the rehearsals in Aix the most serious spectator was always Elaine. She didn’t miss a moment and she knows what I want. I don’t think my absence will be noticed much in London.”

Kiarostami never intended to become an opera director. He had been in Paris for an exhibition of his photographs at the Pompidou Centre when he was invited to lunch by Bernard Foccroulle, general director of the Aix-en-Provence festival. “I knew he was going to ask me to direct Così and I’d decided to say no. I was going to explain that I come from a different background, with different cultural references, that I wouldn’t feel comfortable in opera, that I didn’t trust myself for this job. By the time I got up from the lunch table, I’d said yes.”

Mozart’s music was already part of Kiarostami’s cultural landscape and he has used it in his films. But when he sat down to read the libretto of Così he realised that the structure and content of the opera, with its two pairs of mismatched lovers, felt very familiar. “When I read it I felt very close to the content, and I understood the magic of the music much better. I realised that Mozart could have perfectly easily been Iranian. I also recognised a structure that was very similar to that of Ta’zieh [an early form of Persian theatre with music], which is an art form I have worked with.”

Kiarostami also recognised that the intimacy of Così, which turns on the interaction between a tight ensemble of just six characters, recalls the intimacy of much of his screen work. “A lot of my film work is about the capacity of men and women, especially women, to love, and the story is frequently played out among a small cast.”

In preparation Kiarostami watched some DVDs of past productions of Così. “I found these productions very suffocating. As a spectator I felt that they needed fresh air and new life. I wasn’t setting out to refresh the genre. No, the responsibility given to me was already heavy enough. I didn’t want to try to break rules or break clichés, and I am not stupid enough to think that I can go further than clichés. No, all I wanted to do was to satisfy a demanding audience, and to make something that would be more bearable, more attractive. I used my film-making background, as well as my experience as a photographer, a graphic artist and a set designer.”

Kiarostami has made and incorporated some simple, elegant films that will be projected as backdrops on stage. In the first act, set in an 18th-century coffee shop in Naples, his film shows a contemporary café in Aix with a crowd ostensibly watching and reacting to the performers on stage. This element of circularity has become one of Kiarostami’s themes: for his new film, Shirin, scheduled for release in the UK next month, he shot the faces and emotional reactions of 100 women who are absorbed in watching a film based on a 12th-century Persian poem, which we never see but whose dialogue and score we can hear.

What is not shown but implied can often, he believes, be more eloquent than what is made explicit. “I think that an imagined version of events can sometimes be more powerful. In the case of Così, the expressions and reactions on the faces of the people in the café will not distract from the opera. I think, rather, they will add to the performance.” In a later act, he projects a film of a ship approaching the quay on a panoramic seascape, and in the final scene, an orchestra in full swing, playing Mozart.

Why, I ask, given the contemporary backdrop, has he dressed his cast in period costumes? “We all know this is an 18thcentury work. We cannot pretend that there’s no time gap. But I wanted to go further and to have within the performance a hint of this time gap. The real audience and the filmed audience will be contemporary. It adds to my view that the theme of the opera, of love and truth and trust in relationships, is still relevant today. It is an eternal subject.”

While he is missing being in London, listening to Mozart’s music in rehearsal every day, he has been able to take photographs of one of the most beautiful springs he can recall in Tehran, of enjoying a birthday with one of his two sons, and of working in Paris with the fragrant Juliette Binoche, who appears in Shirin, and who will star in his current film, Certified Copy, which he has been shooting in Italy. His next film will be set and filmed in Korea, so Kiarostami is showing every sign of moving from Iran, where he works under considerable constraints, and on to the international stage.

He says that he would like to direct opera again if asked to do so, and he will certainly visit London if he is allowed to. “I have some great English friends and many Iranian friends living in England. The most beautiful sky I have ever seen was in London. So I will come again if I am allowed to.” In the end, he is generous in his assessment of the affair. “It was a misunderstanding. Nothing more.”

Così fan tutte is at the Coliseum, London WC2 (0871 9110200, www.eno.org) until July 5. Shirin will be released by the BFI on June 26, opening at BFI Southbank and selected cinemas nationwide www.bfi.org.uk/releases

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