Marc Minkowski is a French conductor of classical music, especially known for his interpretations of French Baroque works. Minkowski was musical director of Mozartwoche in Salzburg, Austria from 2013 to 2017 and was general director of the Opéra National de Bordeaux from 2016 to 2021. Minkowski is a Chevalier du Mérite.

After studying the bassoon, Marc Minkowski began conducting at an early age, then followed maestro Charles Bruck’s academy at the Pierre Monteux Memorial School, Hancock, Maine.

In 1982, Minkowski formed Les Musiciens du Louvre, an orchestra dedicated to showcasing French Baroque music which has championed works by Marin Marais （opera Alcyone）, Jean-Joseph Mouret （opera Les Amours de Ragonde）, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Jean-Baptiste Lully （opera Phaëton at Opéra National de Lyon） and Jean-Philippe Rameau （opera Hippolyte et Aricie）. The ensemble has also revived lesser-known Handel operas, such as Teseo, Amadigi di Gaula, Riccardo Primo and Ariodante, as well as several operas by Christoph Willibald Gluck including Armide （at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles）, Alceste and Iphigénie en Tauride （at the English Bach Festival at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden）.

He has performed and recorded critically acclaimed works by Jacques Offenbach: Orphée aux Enfers, La Belle Hélène and La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, along with the Concerto Militaire for cello and orchestra in G major, with Jérôme Pernoo （cello）.

He has also been invited to conduct some of the most renowned American orchestras, including the Cleveland Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, as well as Japanese orchestras like the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the Kanazawa Orchestra Ensemble. He has also led performances with Russian orchestras like the Mariinsky Orchestra and the Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra, as well as various European orchestras, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg, Berlin Philharmonic, Berlin State Opera Orchestra, German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, Dresden State Orchestra, Bamberg Symphony, Saarland State Orchestra, SWR Symphony Orchestra, Basel Chamber Orchestra, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra, National Orchestra of Spain, Prague Philharmonia, Swedish Radio Orchestra, and Finnish Radio Orchestra. Not to mention, he has also worked with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the National Orchestra of the Capitole, and the Orchestra of the Centre-Val de Loire Tours.

His recordings can be found on Erato, EMI’s Virgin Classics and Naïve Records. In 2014 Naïve released a recording of the original version of Der fliegende Holländer and the first recording of Le Vaisseau fantôme by Dietsch, conducted by Minkowski.

Minkowski was awarded the Prize XVIIe in 1988 for his recordings of Lully-Molière: Les Comédies Ballets by les Musiciens du Louvre.

Vincent Boussard is a French opera and theatre director. First a specialist for early opera, he became known for his versions of romantic operas, sometimes in international collaboration.

Since 2001, he has focused on staging operas with regular collaborators Christian Lacroix for costumes, Vincent Lemaire for stage design and Guido Levi for light design.

His operatic beginning is marked by close collaborations with William Christie, Teresa Berganza and Bernard Foccroulle, director of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie Brussels who has regularly invited him.

His productions have since been widely distributed in Europe, including Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Strasbourg Opera House, Liceu of Barcelona, Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse, Hamburg State Opera, La Monnaie in Brussels, Theater an der Wien, Royal Swedish Opera, Semperoper in Dresden, Saint Gall Theater, Bayerische Staatsoper, Aalto Theatre, and the Opéra de Marseille. He has staged operas in Asia, such as New National Theatre Tokyo, and in the US, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

He has collaborated with conductors such as Yves Abel, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Lionel Bringuier, Paolo Carignani, Riccardo Frizza, Patrick Fournillier, Daniel Harding, René Jacobs, Alexander Joel, Alessandro De Marchi, Wayne Marshall, Carlo Montanaro, Renato Palumbo , Andreas Spering and Christian Thielemann, among others.

He is also invited by festivals such as the Salzburg Easter Festival, Aix-en-Provence Festival, Innsbruck Festival of Early Music, Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, and Festival Amazonas de Ópera. In international collaboration, his staging of Massenet’s Manon began in 2015 at the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, and was later also presented at the San Francisco Opera and the Korea National Opera. His production of Bellini’s I Puritani was jointly shown at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège and the Oper Frankfurt.

In 2009, he was conferred a knight in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

In 1991 he graduated in stage and costume design at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan.

He started working very young as assistant to the scenographer Tito Varisco. From 1998 to 2008 he was assistant to the scenographer Ezio Frigerio and worked with him to design the settings for the most important theatres and opera houses in the world.

From 1992 to today he has designed sets and costumes for over one hundred opera, drama end ballet productions in many important European and Asian Istitutions among which we recall: La traviata by Verdi, directed by Vincent Boussard for Korea National Opera Seoul; Aida by Verdi, directed by Ignacio Garcia for Greek National Opera and Arena di Verona Foundation, Il Trovatore by Verdi, directed by Ignacio Garcia for ABAO Bilbao Opera, Faust by Gounod.

In 2009 he was awarded the International Prize Cinearti “La Chioma di Berenice” as the best Italian theatre costumes for the contemporary work Il Carro e i Canti by Alessandro Solbiati, directed by Ignacio Garcia, staged at the Teatro Verdi in Trieste.

In January 2020 the international magazine The Scenographer published a monographic issue to his activity as set and costume designer.

In parallel with his activity for theatre and performances, he creates his contemporary art installations.

Born on May 16, 1951, Christian Marie Marc Lacroix is a French fashion designer. The name may also refer to the company he founded.

Lacroix’s designs combine luxury and insouciance. He prefers artisanal trades, fringe, bead, and embroidery. He’s characterized by a strong sense of colour, and patterns mix.

Lacroix was born in Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône in southern France. At a young age he began sketching historical costumes and fashions. Lacroix graduated from secondary school in 1969 and moved to Montpellier, to study Art History at the University of Montpellier. In 1971, he enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris. While working on a dissertation on dress in French 18th-century painting, Lacroix also pursued a program in museum studies at the École du Louvre.

In 1987, he opened his own haute couture house. He began putting out ready-to-wear in 1988 drawing inspiration from diverse cultures. In 1989, Lacroix launched jewelry, handbags, shoes, glasses, scarves, and ties, along with ready-to-wear. In this same year, he opened boutiques within Paris, Arles, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse, London, Geneva, and Japan.

With his background in historical costume and clothing, Lacroix soon made headlines with his opulent, fantasy creations, including the short puffball skirt （“le pouf”）, rose prints, and low décolleté necklines. He referenced widely from other styles—from fashion history （the corset and the crinoline）, from folklore, and from many parts of the world—and he mixed his references in a topsy-turvy manner. He favored the hot colors of the Mediterranean region, a hodgepodge of patterns, and experimental fabrics, sometimes handwoven in local workshops.

Christian Lacroix has designed many dresses for Hollywood stars; among them, he is responsible for designing Christina Aguilera’s wedding dress and in the 1990s was famed as being a favorite designer of Edina Monsoon in the UK sitcom Absolutely Fabulous .

Robert Schwaighofer was born in Tyrol and lives in Vienna, Austria.

After completing his studies and finishing with a Master’s Degree in fashion, he gained experience as an assistant to international costume and fashion designers.

He works as a costume designer in different genres: opera, ballet, musical, dance, performance and theatre.

Since 1998 he works with Christian Lacroix on various theatre projects as collaborator.

Since 2009, he works together with Vincent Boussard in productions such as Agrippina, Candide, Mahagony, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Adriana Lecouvreur, Ezio, I Puritani, Madama Butterfly, La Fanciulla del West, Otello, Pelléas et Mélisande, Salome, Lohengrin, Radamisto, Cinderella, Un Ballo in Mascera, Aida, Tannhäuser, and many more.

Nicolas Hurtevent, video designer, has been working for years on the creation of moving images for live performances.

Following his training in cinema arts and techniques at the European Film College and the Bruxelles’ Centre de formation multimédia, he works with the Théâtre du Maquis and various theatre companies.

Since 2010, he has been working at the Opera de Marseille and the Festival of Lyric Art in Aix-en-Provence where he welcomed, among others, Roméo Castellucci, Simon McBurney and Simon Stone.

He joined Vincent Boussard and his team in 2019 with Les contes d'Hoffmann at the Seoul Opera and then with Mignon at the Opéra de Wallonie, Werther at the Opéra de Lausanne, Giulio Cesare in Egitto at Köln Oper, Adriana Lecouvreur at the Riga Opera and Tosca at Hong Kong Opera in 2023.

Andrius Stasiulis creates lighting design for theatres, concerts and conferences. He cooperates with various Lithuanian musical theatres, classical and popular music performers, organizers of festivals, exhibitions and conferences.

He started his career in 2010 in the Old Theatre of Vilnius. In the same year, he joined the team of the art factory LOFTAS as a lighting designer. In 2012 he was invited to work at the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre as a lighting operator. Since 2013 he has been working with the Vilnius City Opera team. He contributed to the implementation of various opera lighting projects, and also created the lighting design for C. Saint-Saëns's opera Samson and Delilah and the exhibition “From that Opera” at the MO Museum. In 2018 he created the lighting design for LVSO rock opera Eglė. In the same year, he cooperated with the Klaipėda State Music Theatre to create the lighting designs for E. Balsis’s opera Journey to Tilžė, R. Wagner’s opera The Flying Dutchman, G. Donizetti’s opera Pulko Duktė, A. Dvořák’s opera Rusalka, the dance performance Romeo and Juliet based on S. Prokofiev’s ballet, dance projects Attention! Ballets （2020, 2021）, story opera Klaipėda （2023）, cantata Carmina Burana （2023）, and triptych of dance performances Don Quixote.

In 2023 Andris Stasiulis was awarded the Golden Cross of the Stage for the lighting design of the performances Dona Kichotė （Klaipėda State Music Theatre） and Indigo. Das Schliemann Project （Sheik Dance Theatre）.

Born in 1970 in Leoben, Austria, Letonja studied classical dance in Graz and Amsterdam as well as modern dance under Alvin Ailey and Erick Hawkins in New York. He performed in a wide range of styles and venues: from ballets at Oper Graz to Jan Fabre, from Montréal Danse to the Tanz Theatre Bremen under Susanne Linke, among others. At Tanz Theatre Bremen, Helge began to create his own pieces in 1995. The following year, he founded the Steptext Dance Project and now is still its artistic director. In 2003, Steptext Dance Project became company-in-residence at the Schwankhalle, which he co-designed as a production facility and centre of contemporary dance art.

In addition to his 50 or so dance pieces to date, which have often been realized in interdisciplinary and transcultural collaboration and presented worldwide, he choreographs for opera productions, including productions at the Salzburg Festival, Zurich Opera House, Berlin State Opera, New National Theatre Tokyo and Semperoper Dresden.

In his impressively sensual aesthetics, Letonja creates vital frictional surfaces and vibrating mirror images of social conditions and processes. His works reflect the inner-societal and cross-cultural coexistence, combining emotional and mental movements of individual and social bodies with metaphorical contexts. His trilogy DisPLACING Future, for example, looks at global migration flows, and the European-African co-produced and cast pieces Homescapes (2012), Boxom (2014) and Out of Joint (2017) negotiate transcultural designs.

As festival director and experienced project initiator, as well as board member of the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland, Letonja is involved in diverse institutional and artistic cooperations for the regional and international development, networking and mediation of dance art. He was head of the “independent companies” section of the Norddeutsche Tanztreffen – Tanzplan Bremen, and was one of the main initiators of the projects KoresponDance Europe, Zuhause.Anderswo and Sehnsucht Europa, which involve several countries and municipal partners, as well as the festival AFRICTIONS. Nominated for the BKM Prize for Cultural Education 2013 and the George Tabori Prize 2014 and awarded the Bremen Diversity Prize 2016, Letonja develops dance as a mediator of cultural diversity, social participation, interdisciplinary art and research.

In 2019, the ensemble Of Curious Nature was founded by Helge Letonja and Felix Landerer. Since 2022, Helge Letonja is the artistic director of the company.

JIAO Miao is a resident conductor of the China NCPA orchestra and a conductor of the China NCPA Youth Ensemble Orchestra. She studied under famous Chinese conductor Professor WU Lingfen at the Conducting Department of the China Conservatory of Music, and also received guidance from Mr. YAN Liangkun, a well-known conductor. In 2014 and 2015, she made an exchange visit to the USC Thornton School of Music and Los Angeles Opera on invitation.

As a resident conductor, JIAO Miao participates in making a schedule for more than 100 performances to be given throughout the year by the China NCPA Chorus. She serves as the chorus master in Chinese and foreign operas produced by the NCPA, including Xishi, Carmen, La Traviata, Turandot, Tosca, The Chinese Orphan, The Red Guards on Honghu Lake, A Village Teacher, Il barbiere di Siviglia, The Dawns Here Are Quiet, Visitors on the Snow Mountain, Rickshaw Boy, etc. She has planned and conducted a series of distinctively themed concerts, such as Listening to Golden Years, Wonderful Harmony, Love in Autumn, etc. JIAO Miao has served as a chorus master at lots of concerts given by famous conductors - she organised choral rehearsals for Verdi’s Requiem, presented by the NCPA in cooperation with Chung Myung-Whun, receiving high recognition and praise from the maestro; organised choral rehearsals for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor in a performance co-given by the NCPA and Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. In addition, JIAO Miao has accumulated rich experience in interpreting art choruses - she conducted the China NCPA Chorus in singing composer GUO Wenjing’s a cappella Echoes of Heaven and Earth, which was published on CD; conducted Jiangchengzi, a choral work composed by Mr. Qigang Chen. In recent years, JIAO Miao has served as a chorus master in a series of important performances including Enduring Memories of Hangzhou at the Opening Ceremony of the G20 Summit, A Millennium Promise at the “Belt and Road” Forum for International Cooperation, etc.

Meanwhile, JIAO Miao has planned and involved herself in 100 public-spirited performances given in a series of art popularisation and education activities organised by the NCPA; hosted lots of choral art salons rich in content and various in form, which are much liked by art lovers.