Kristine Pasternaka, costume designer, was born in Latvia. She graduated from the Riga Art School as a painter and from the Latvian Academy of the Art as a textile artist. Her first production was The Lion in Winter at the Latvian National Theatre, later followed by over 100 theatre and opera productions, among them The Dance of Death and Much Ado About Nothing. Today she is the head costume designer for the Latvian National Opera where her productions include Alcina (Handel), Macbeth (Verdi), Don Giovanni (Mozart), Manon Lescaut (Puccini) and others. She has designed costumes for opera and theatre productions in Estonia, Iceland, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Croatia and Russia. This is her first work for the Israeli Opera.