Lars T. Lih

Lars T. Lih received his Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University (1984) and has published extensively on the early Soviet period, including Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921 (1990), Lenin Rediscovered (2006), and 'Melodrama and the Myth of the Soviet Union' (in Imitations of Life: Two Centuries of Melodrama in Russia, 2002).  He has a long-standing interest in the presentation of political and social myths in opera and melodrama. His research in this area has provided the basis for graduate seminars on Russian Opera and on Opera and Revolution (Verdi, Wagner, Shostakovich).   His current research is on Alexander Borodin's opera Prince Igor and on the underlying theme of social mobility in 19th-century European opera.