The Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University today announced that its 2016 Lincoln Kirstein Lecture will be given by historian, writer, and internationally renowned tenor Ian Bostridge on Tuesday, December 6. Bostridge’s lecture will discuss the relationship between song and dance, the role of song in Schubert’s music, and Benjamin Britten’s complex work with dance and stylization from The Prince of the Pagodas to Death in Venice. Opening remarks on the life of Lincoln Kirstein will be delivered by Leon Wieseltier.

The Lincoln Kirstein Lecture is an annual lecture sponsored by the Center for Ballet and the Arts in honor of Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996) and featuring a major figure in cultural life. The lecture is free and open to the public and will be held at 6 p.m. at Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Music Center, 129 West 67th Street in Manhattan. RSVP is required.

Bostridge’s international recital career has taken him to the Salzburg, Edinburgh, Munich, Vienna, Aldeburgh, and Schwarzenberg Schubertiade festivals and to the main stages of Carnegie Hall and La Scala, Milan. His recordings have won numerous international prizes, including two Grammy Awards for Best Opera Performance. He has worked with the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, New York Philharmonic, and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras.

Bostridge began his career as a scholar and historian, earning a PhD from Oxford in 1990. He was a fellow in history at Corpus Christi College, Oxford from 1992 to 1995 and in 2001 was elected an honorary fellow. Bostridge was made a CBE in the 2004 New Year’s Honours. In 2016, he was awarded the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for non-fiction writing for his book, Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession.

The CBA Lincoln Kirstein Lecture is sponsored by the American Express Foundation. For more information about CBA programs and events, visit the website.