Ivo van Hove was born in Heist-op-den-Berg (Belgium) in 1958. He headed the Zuidelijk Toneel in Eindhoven from 1990 to 2000, and the Holland Festival from 1998 to 2004. He was appointed director of Amsterdam’s Toneelgroep in 2001. He has directed numerous works, including Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, John Cassavetes’ Opening Night and Husbands, Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Theorem, Antonioni-project, a work based on the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, Jean Cocteau’s La Voix humaine, Carlo Goldoni’s Trilogia della villeggiatura, Maxim Gorky’s Children of the Sun, and the Nico Muhly adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. He has also staged numerous operas: Lulu and Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Flanders Opera, The Makropulos Affair and Salomé at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, Macbeth and The Diary of One Who Disappeared at the Lyon Opera, Mazeppa at the Berlin Komische Oper, La clemenza di Tito at La Monnaie in Brussels, and the world premiere production of Charles Wuorinen’s Brokeback Mountain at the Teatro Real in Madrid. In 2010, he directed a version of Molière’s Misanthrope (Der Menschenfeind) at Berlin’s Schaubühne which was later restaged at the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe’s Ateliers Berthier in March 2012. His 2014 production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge at the Young Vic Theatre in London and then on Broadway received a Tony Award and an Olivier Award for Best Production and Best Director. In 2015, he directed Sophocles’ Antigone in Paris with Juliette Binoche (Théâtre de la Ville), then A View from the Bridge at the Ateliers Berthier. In 2016, he directed a stage adaptation of Visconti’s The Damned in the Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes in Avignon featuring the troupe of the Comédie-Française (which earned the Molière award for Best Production). In November 2015 he directed the first stage production of David Bowie’s final project, Lazarus and returned to the Théâtre de Chaillot in January 2016 with Kings of War, a gripping adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V, Henry VI and Richard III. That same year, he also staged Arthur Miller’s The Crucible on Broadway. In 2018, he directed Boris Godunov at the Paris Opera. In 2019, he presented an adaptation of Louis Couperus’ The Hidden Force at the Théâtre de La Villette, then staged two of Euripides’ plays, Electra and Orestes, in an evening double bill at the Comédie-Française. He also directed Don Giovanni at the Paris Opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Aix Festival and West Side Story on Broadway.