This is only Holten's second stateside assignment; the first was the U.S. premiere of Ligeti's 1978 black comedy Le grand macabre at San Francisco Opera in 2004, a production that he originally staged at the Royal Danish Opera.
Holten was born in 1973 in Copenhagen and was appointed artistic director of the Royal Danish Opera in 1999. He has directed more than 40 productions of opera, drama, musical theater and operetta in Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Latvia, France, the U.S. and Austria.
Previous rarely-performed operas staged at Bard SummerScape include Leos Janšcek's Osud in 2003, Dmitri Shostakovich's The Nose in 2004 and Marc Blitzstein's Regina in 2005.
Performances of Genoveva are tonight, July 30, August 2, 4 and 5 at the Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Information is available at http://summerscape.bard.edu/.