Kasper Holten: why Royal Opera is abuzz "I was a child who had some difficulties expressing my emotions, and in opera I found something which could do that for me," is his psychological explanation of this precocious passion, about which he soon became "horribly nerdy." As well as accruing an encyclopaedic knowledge of the repertory, he made toy opera houses out of Lego and mounted a puppet Ring cycle - with his own surtitles - when he was 12. Although he graduated from school with the top mark for economics in Denmark, he bypassed university or conservatoire. At 18, I walked into the Royal Danish Opera as a volunteer to help on a production of Ariadne auf Naxos and you could say I never walked out again. At 26, after an apprenticeship which involved backstage and administrative work alongside directing his own productions, Holten was made the RDO's artistic director, a post in which he continued successfully for a decade. As well as supervising the company's move into a brand-new theatre and developing its backstage infrastructure, his own shows enjoyed acclaim - his Tannhäuser, available on DVD, is one of the most convincing interpretations I have ever seen. His five-year contract with the Royal Opera allows him annual leave to stage two of his own productions, one of which may be at Covent Garden - next season, he will mount Eugene Onegin here, with Simon Keenlyside in the title-role. Holten left Copenhagen vowing never to run an opera house again, but the Royal Opera's offer was one he couldn't resist. It's not just that I adore London, it's also that I have had some of my greatest operatic experiences in this house - the recent Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, for instance. And I think the mix of the American and European models in the funding system is very healthy. There's no need for any quick fix. I have great admiration for [chief executive] Tony Hall's efforts to make this a forward-thinking institution, and the place is very well run. But I feel I have something to contribute, particularly in finding new directors of my generation. His choices aren't likely to be safely conservative, but he isn't a kneejerk radical either. Holten says he still pinches himself in meetings when he realises he is collaborating with legends of the business such as the Royal Opera's music director, Antonio Pappano, and casting director, Peter Mario Katona, but he has also brought in as deputy his own man - the young British director John Fulljames, who acts as his "everyday conversation partner and guide to the British cultural scene. John keeps my thinking fresh. What has surprised him to date is the extent to which the forthcoming Arts Council cuts will "put pressure on the organisation to do more for less. We need more new productions, but we also need to find new ways to afford them. Another shock is the casting process: in Copenhagen, he drew on a resident ensemble of Danish musicians, but at Covent Garden possibilities are circumscribed by the byzantine schedules of the world's top conductors and singers. I hadn't fully understood the complexity of working with that. Ticket prices are also high on his problem agenda: there's consideration of a move to a more dynamic model, along the lines of airline internet sites which alter their charges daily according to demand. He doesn't want the Royal Opera to serve as a British showcase, working on the principle that "Covent Garden is a global house," in which native talent must compete on a level playing field with all-comers. I want the best of opera. Whether it's British or not is beside the point. Most of all, however, he wants to broaden opera's conversation with other art forms and cultural institutions, with a mission statement proposing the idea of an opera house as an "emotional fitness centre." "Life as we know it today is dominated by words, and what words are good at is expressing logic," he explains. But so much of life is not logic, and that's where opera comes in: it connects you to the parts of life that aren't rational.