Faces to Watch in ’96 :...

Mark Morris is the unpredictable dance-maker best known for turning “The Nutcracker” into “The Hard Nut.”

But Morris, 39, has been branching out into staging opera, with “Le Nozze di Figaro” in Brussels and “Die Fledermaus” in Seattle, along with creating a choreographic adaptation of “Dido and Aeneas” in which he danced both the Sorceress and Queen of Carthage.

In a collaboration between his modern dance ensemble and Christopher Hogwood’s Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, Morris will direct and choreograph Gluck’s opera “Orfeo ed Euridice” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles in April.

Hogwood conducts, the chorus stays in the pit and the soloists are Michael Chance and Dana Hanchard (the title roles) and Christine Brandes as Amor.

Is Morris planning to give up dance to concentrate on opera? No way.

“What’s important to me is not to make the same piece over and over. . . . ,” he has said. “So if I’m working on a particular dilemma, I rarely take that on to the next one. That’s done; I have a different set of problems for this next one . . . That’s what keeps me interested, in fact.”