Dr. Petra Zeller Dotlačilová
Performance Costume in 18th-Century France: Louis-René Boquet between Tradition and Reform, Bloomsbury, 2026.
zum Verlag

Dr. Federico Lanzellotti
Carlo Ambrogio Lonati: Violinista, cantante e compositore nell’Europa del Seicento, Brepols, 2026.
zum Verlag

Guest artist: Mojca Gal, dance and violin

Date: Tuesday, 10 March 2026
Time: 18:15
Venue: Vortragssaal, Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar,
Petersgraben 27, 4051 Basel

Performance Costume in Eighteenth-Century France: Louis-René Boquet Between Tradition and Reform
The book examines the development of theatrical costume in the long eighteenth century through the work of Louis-René Boquet (1717–1814), the leading costume designer at the French court and the Paris Opera. It traces the shift from an aesthetic of propriety to new ideals of truthfulness, showing how fashion, visual arts, and material practice influenced reforms in theatre costume. Based on a wide range of primary sources and illustrated in full colour throughout, the study explores the interactions of authors, theatre management, designers, tailors, and performers in the process of these changes. 

Petra Zeller Dotlačilová  is a Performance and Dance scholar, holding PhDs from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and Stockholm University. Currently, she works as a postdoctoral researcher within the SNSF Project NightMuse at the University of Basel. She participated in the research projects ‘Performing Premodernity’ at Stockholm University (2014–2019) and ‘Ritual Design for the Ballet Stage’ at Leipzig University (2015–2017). Together with prof. Hanna Walsdorf she edited Dance Body Costume (2019). Between 2021 and 2024, she led her own research project, ‘Fabrication of Performance’, at the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, funded by the Swedish Research Council. She works as an editor for Dance Context Journal. A globetrotter herself, she is interested in travelling ideas and practices between art forms, countries and periods.

Carlo Ambrogio Lonati: Violinista, cantante e compositore nell'Europa del Seicento
Carlo Ambrogio Lonati (c. 1645–post 1701) has begun to receive renewed scholarly attention, revealing a legacy that, until recently, remained largely overlooked. This monograph offers the first comprehensive study of Lonati’s life and works, combining a reconstruction of his remarkable international career – as a composer, violinist, and singer – with an in-depth examination of his vocal and instrumental output. It also introduces new critical tools and conceptual approaches applicable more broadly to the study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century musical repertoire. The volume includes numerous illustrations and musical examples, as well as the first thematic catalogue of Lonati’s works.

Federico Lanzellotti  is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel, within the framework of the SNSF Project NightMuse. After completing his PhD at the universities of Bologna and Madrid, he became a research fellow at the University of Padua and the Venice Conservatoire. He is currently editing two volumes for the opera omnia of Giovanni Bononcini (Fondazione Arcadia) and Giuseppe Tartini (Bärenreiter), and he is also a contributor to DEUMM online. His primary research interests are in music philology and dramaturgy, particularly in seventeenth and eighteenth-century repertoire, but also in contemporary music.