RNCM to Co-Host International Conference at UNESCO World Heritage Site in Czechia

Dr Austin Glatthorn partners with international scholars to recontextualise the history of German opera in the long eighteenth century between 25 and 28 June 2025 at the Schwarzenberg Castle, Český Krumlov.

The international conference ‘New Approaches to German Opera, 1650–1830’ is the capstone event to the volume The Cambridge History of German Opera to the Early Nineteenth Century, edited by Dr Austin Glatthorn and Dr Estelle Joubert (Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada) and under contract with Cambridge University Press.

The conference will bring together contributors from Austria, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States to explore the challenges of writing a new history of German opera. Through highlighting diverse voices including women, performers with disabilities, child performers, and those involved in performing these operas globally, the project aims in part to address historically marginalised performers and composers in historical operatic practices.

Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fountain School of Performing Arts (Dalhousie University), the conference will take place between 25 and 28 June 2025 at the Schwarzenberg Castle in Český Krumlov, Czechia, home to one of only two surviving Baroque theatres with complete stage machinery, sets, and backdrops in working order. This unique venue offers conference participants rare access to a fragile resource not typically available to the public or researchers, as well as the opportunity to experience a work performed live on the castle’s eighteenth-century stage.

The conference will coincide with Dalhousie’s Advanced Seminar in Baroque Culture, which Austin will be co-teaching. In so doing, it will involve students and local Study Centre staff, providing an opportunity for feedback from specialists, non-specialists, and students. The event aims to generate and mobilise knowledge in the creative and performing arts, providing a history of early modern German opera for future generations.

For more information, please contact Austin at [email protected].

14 May 2025