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Diane Tisdall

Diane is a postdoctoral research fellow on the AHRC-funded Staging Napoleonic Theatre project, hosted by the French Department at the University of Warwick. The project team, headed by Kate Astbury, will produce two French melodramas with external stakeholders (Pixerécourt’s La Forteresse du Danube, Georgian Theatre Royal; prisoner-of-war melodrama, Roseliska, Portchester Castle, English Heritage) alongside public workshops exploring nineteenth-century acting techniques. Diane is the musical director for La Forteresse and is currently creating a musical score for Roseliska: the original has not survived.

Diane is also a Visiting Research Fellow in Musicology at King’s College London; her doctorate, Pierre Baillot and Violin Pedagogy in Paris, 1795-1815, was awarded by KCL in 2016. Based on extensive archival research, her thesis provided an historical account of the initial violin classes at the Paris Conservatoire, exploring the institutionalisation of French music education during the first Napoleonic era.

Recent publications include a chapter exploring Etienne-Nicolas Méhul as teaching inspector at the Conservatoire (Actes Sud-Palazzetto Bru Zane). Diane is currently preparing two further articles from her thesis: the career of Pierre Baillot prior to his Conservatoire teaching post, and the role of bureaucracy in the formation of the Conservatoire pedagogical programme.

Theatre History Podcast #43
Podcast

Theatre History Podcast #43

Being Melodramatic with the Staging Napoleonic Theatre Project

14 August 2017

The Staging Napoleonic Theatre project is working to study and stage early examples of melodrama, a theatrical genre that was widely popular in the nineteenth century.​