Nastasia Heckendorff is a postdoctoral researcher at the Alban Berg Foundation in Vienna. Her main research interests include music culture in the early modern period, opera and music theatre with a focus on the 17th century and the early 20th century, as well as authorship and artistic creative processes. In 2024, she received a Ph.D. in Music History from the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar and the University Friedrich Schiller Jena (Germany) with a dissertation on the complex interactions between opera and politics in Marco Marazzoli’s stage works. Her ISM project examines Christian allegories in 17th century sacred operas. During that period, theological concepts such as Soul and Innocence, embodied by emotionally stirring figures, populated theater stages. Based on the assumption that “coding” and “decoding” of these concepts in the medium of opera functioned as a practice of communication, the project investigates their political and cultural significance. View a full bio here.
