Louisa Proske has established herself as a versatile, visionary director and arts leader on two continents. She is looking forward to some major house debuts in the coming seasons, including at Opéra de Paris, Detroit Opera, and at Aalto Musiktheater Essen. In 2021, Louisa was appointed Associate Artistic Director and Resident Director of Oper Halle, and is also the Co-Founder and former Co-Artistic Director of the critically acclaimed New York City-based Heartbeat Opera— “pioneers” (Wall Street Journal) and “an enterprise that, while small and still young, has already contributed more to opera’s vitality than most major American companies,” according to The New York Times. Opera productions include Handel’s Rinaldo (Glimmerglass Festival) and Serse (Händelfestspiele Halle), Ernest Chausson’s Le roi Arthus (Bard SummerScape), and Virgil Thomson’s The Mother of Us All, a historic 2020 collaboration between Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Philharmonic, and Juilliard Vocal Arts. Other recent work: Into the Woods, Rigoletto (Oper Halle), Agrippina (Lincoln Center), Der Freischütz, Don Giovanni, Carmen, Lucia di Lammermoor, Daphnis & Chloé, Miss Handel (all Heartbeat Opera), La bohème (Pittsburgh Festival Opera), Così fan tutte (LoftOpera), Falstaff (Dell’Arte Opera), Gianni Schicchi, Riders to the Sea, La Voix Humaine (Yale Opera); the world premiere of Invisible Cities at the Italian Academy New York; and Anthony Braxton’s Trillium J (Roulette, as associate director). Theater productions include The White Devil (Red Bull Theater), peerless (nominated for a Berkshire Theatre Award for Outstanding Direction), Gaslight, This, Engagements (all Barrington Stage Company), Cymbeline and As You Like It (Yale School of Drama), and a European tour of Macbeth. Louisa holds an MFA in theater directing from Yale School of Drama and a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University, U.K.