Performing the Eighteenth Century

Magnus Tessing Schneider is a Docent (Reader) in Theatre Studies from Stockholm University and currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern Denmark within the research project ‘Histories: Assessing the Role of Aesthetics in the Historical Paradigm’. His research interests include seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European theatre, Shakespearean dramaturgy and performance practice, the intertwined histories of singing and acting, the opera composers Monteverdi, Cavalli, Gluck, Mozart, and Verdi, and the librettists Giovan Francesco Busenello, Ranieri Calzabigi, and Lorenzo Da Ponte. He was a cofounder of the Nordic Network for Early Opera, and his practice-oriented research has inspired opera productions across the world. He is the author of The Original Portrayal of Mozart’s Don Giovanni (London: Routledge, 2021). He is co-editor with Ruth Tatlow of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito: A Reappraisal (Stockholm University Press, 2018), and the editor of Felicity Baker’s essay collection Don Giovanni’s Reasons: Thoughts on a Masterpiece (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2021).

Meike Wagner is Professor and Chair of Theatre Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. She is Secretary General of the International Federation for Theatre Research and a member of its Theatre Historiography working group. Her research interests include theatre history with a focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, contemporary theatre and performance, especially puppet theatre and object performance, theatre and media, and curatorial dramaturgy. She holds an advanced grant from the European Research Council for her research project ‘Performing Citizenship: Social and Political Agency in Non-Professional Theatre Practice in Germany, France, Britain, Sweden and Switzerland (1780-1850)’ (2021–2026). She is the author of Nähte am Puppenkörper: Der mediale Blick und die Körperentwürfe des Theaters (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2003) and Theater und Öffentlichkeit im Vormärz: Berlin, München und Wien als Schauplätze bürgerlicher Medienpraxis (Berlin: Akademie, 2013). Recent publications include: ‘“Schöpferin glücklicher Stunden…”: Utopische Spielräume von Amateur-Schauspielerinnen nach 1800’, Forum Modernes Theater 1–2 (2022), 177–190; and ‘Who am I? Challenging the Self through Puppets’, in Uneins: Identitätsentwürfe zum Gegenwartstheater, ed. Beate Hochholdinger-Reiterer and Laurette Burgholzer (Berlin: Alexander, 2021), 44–61.