Michael Burden

Michael Burden, FAHA, (born 14 March 1960, in Adelaide, South Australia) is an Australian musicologist, working in the United Kingdom. He was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2018.

He is currently Fellow in Music, Dean and Chattels Fellow at New College, Oxford; he is also director of New Chamber Opera, and Professor of Opera Studies in the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford. He served as Chair of the Board of the University of Oxford's music faculty from 2015 to 2018. From 2007 until 2015, he was a Visitor to Oxford's Ashmolean Museum; he is also curator of the Music Faculty's collection of portraits. In the academic year 2009-2010, he was one of the University's four Pro-Proctors (deputies to the Proctors).

His research is on the stage music of Purcell, and on aspects of dance and theatre in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and includes a catalogue of Metastasio’s operas as performed in London, an edition of Le Ballet de la Nuit: Rothschild B1/16/6 with Jennifer Thorp, and a biographical account of Regina Mingotti’s years in London. He is currently completing a book on the staging of opera in London 1660 to 1860. Much of his recent research has been directed towards the London Stage Project, in particular to soon-to-be released The London Stage Calendar 1800-1844. .

He is on the editorial committees for the collected Stradella and Eccles editions, and the editorial boards of the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the series 'Studies in British Musical Cultures.'

With Jennifer Thorp, he organises the annual Oxford Dance Symposium, which takes place each year at New College.

From 2009 to 2013, he was the president of The British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, preceded by two years as Vice-President, and followed by two years as Past President. He has also served on the Council of the Royal Musical Association and is on the steering committee of the Besterman Centre for the Enlightenment (see Voltaire Foundation), a member of the Project Team for Ballad Operas Online, a trustee of both Répertoire International des Sources Musicales United Kingdom, and the Gerald Coke Handel Foundation; and on the advisory panel of The Oxford Centre for Life Writing. In 2016, he became one of the patrons of the St Peter’s Cathedral Music Foundation, which supports the music of St Peter's Cathedral, Adelaide.

One of his interests outside music is architectural history, particularly the history of architecture and town planning in Adelaide, South Australia. His first book was a photographic exploration of demolished buildings of that city. Published as Lost Adelaide by Oxford University Press in 1983, it remains a classic text in the documentation of Adelaide's lost architectural heritage.