The Love Birds: Chaucer’s A Parlement of Foules

Robert Eisenstein, Artistic Director (bass viol)

Robert Eisenstein has led over 200 productions and performances with Folger Consort over the past 40 years, including Measure + Dido at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Napa Valley Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice at Strathmore, The Fairy Queen, and Hildegard Von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum at the Washington National Cathedral. Recently retired as the Director of the Five College Early Music Program; Music Director for the Five College Opera Project production of Francesca Caccini’s La Liberazione di Ruggiero; Mount Holyoke College faculty emeritus, where he taught music history and performed on the viola de gamba, violin, and medieval fiddle. He is an active participant in Five College Medieval Studies. Recipient of Early Music America’s Thomas Binkley Award for outstanding achievement in performance and scholarship by the director of a college early music ensemble.

David Wallace has been Judith Rodin Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, since 1996, with visiting stints at London, Melbourne, Princeton, and Jerusalem (twice). His current major research project is National Epics, a collective effort to comprehend the cultural mechanics of nationalism, on a global scale. David is a Fellow of the English Association, was awarded the Sir Israel Gollancz Prize by the British Academy, and served as President of the Medieval Academy of America from 2018–19. In 2021–22 he was Faculty Fellow at Penn’s Wolf Humanities Center, where the topic was “Migration.” In Fall 2023 he was Visiting Fellow, Warburg Institute, University of London, and then Director of the Penn English in London Program. David’s long-term, primary commitments have been to Europe and European literatures, to the performance and enjoyment of poetry (especially Chaucer), to Dante and his afterlife, and to helping secure a viable future for younger scholars. english.upenn.edu/people/david-wallace