Gundula Kreuzer - Biography#

Gundula Kreuzer studied musicology, philosophy, and modern history at the Universities of Münster and Oxford, where she earned her Master of Studies and PhD in musicology. She held a Junior Research Fellowship at Merton College, Oxford, before joining the Yale Department of Music in 2005, first as Asssistant, then as Associate and now as full professor. In 2018 she rejected an appointment as W3 professor (chair) at Leipzig University.

In both her writing and her teaching, Kreuzer approaches music from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives, such as social, cultural, and political history as well as theories of technology and multimedia. Her first book, Verdi and the Germans, examines the changing impact of the popular Italian composer on German musical self-perception and national identity. Her second monograph, Curtain, Gong, Steam: Wagnerian Technologies of Nineteenth-Century Opera, addresses how composers since the late eighteenth century increasingly tried to control certain aspects of staging by embracing specific stage technologies. It is a milestone in Wagner research. Her recent interests include contemporary experimental opera.

Kreuzer is a leading figure among the younger generation of musicologists, especially in opera research.