The director and librettist Miranda Lakerveld (Utrecht, 1976) sets the stage for opera and classical music in which connecting cultures, religions and artistic disciplines is the guiding principle. For this, she started World Opera Lab. Some major projects in recent years include Orfeo in India (adapted from Monteverdi) in Ahmedabad with European and Indian musicians and singers, Erda, an opera installation with music by Calliope Tsoupaki, De thuiskomst van Odysseus in Amsterdam West, a series of opera programs about conflicts in the Middle East in collaboration with De Balie with music from Monteverdi and traditional music from Morocco and Turkey, Arïanna and a new multi-lingual adaptation of the Matheus Passion, Passie van nu. She worked on Het innerlijke landschap, a project with film and opera about traditional Sichuan opera, together with the documentary maker Frank Scheffer. It was featured at the Holland Festival in 2015. In 2017, she made Temple of Time together with the composer Sinta Wullur for the Holland Festival as well. In 2019, the festival featured the opera Turan Dokht, an ‘intercultural rewriting’ of Puccini’s Turandot, which she worked on together with the Iranian composer Aftab Darvishi. World Opera Lab, founded by Miranda Lakerveld, makes intercultural opera pieces, does research and gives workshops. The pieces transcend cultural differences and take dialogue between various disciplines as their guiding principle. Social themes are poetically explored in a mix of music and dance from different cultures. The work of World Opera Lab is inspired by research into traditional musical theatre practices from Tibet, Japan, Guatemala, India and Iran. World Opera Lab has made various productions in the Netherlands (including for the Holland Festival) and abroad, such as last year’s Arïanna, a reconstruction of the lost opera by Monteverdi of the same name, in which Monteverdi’s music was combined with both traditional music from throughout the world and newly composed works.