Professor Mark Berry's research explores the intersections of opera, politics, and dynastic power in eighteenth-century Europe. This spring, he will deliver papers at the Austrian Studies Association conference in Salzburg, the Online Enlightenment Club, and – first – the inaugural Derek Beales Biennial Lecture at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
Representation of “La Clemenza di Tito”” (La Clemence de Titus) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) at the coronation feast of Emperor Leopold II of Austria (1747-1792) as king of Boheme in 1791 in the theatre of the Royal Street of Prague. Prague Museu)
On Saturday 16 May, Professor Mark Berry will deliver the inaugural Derek Beales Biennial Lecture at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Professor Derek Beales (1931–2023), Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, was one of the pre-eminent historians of modern Europe and author of the definitive biography of the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II. In his final year before retirement, he supervised Mark’s undergraduate dissertation.
Beales’s lasting legacy
Supported by the Derek Beales History Trust Fund, the lecture may encompass any area of history in which the historian worked over the decades, ‘with the occasional focus on the history of music’ – always a crucial concern to Beales’s own work and a major inspiration to Prof. Berry in its combination of historical and musical scholarship. The lecture will echo in its title a public lecture given by Professor Beales, ‘Mozart and the Habsburgs’.
From Salzburg to the Enlightenment Club: a busy summer ahead
A little later in May, Prof. Berry will visit Salzburg for the annual conference of the Austrian Studies Association, where on 30 May he will give a paper entitled ‘From Salzburg to Prague: Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, the House of Austria, and the 1791 Bohemian coronation’. In June, he will speak to the Online Enlightenment Club, an interdisciplinary reading group for all interested in the ideas, culture, and history of Europe in the long eighteenth century. The paper will be entitled ‘Clemency, Rebellion, and the House of Austria: Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and the Bohemian Coronation of 1791’.
