Diana Matut (DE; Yiddish language, voice)

teaches Old Yiddish and Jewish music at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

Formerly a lecturer in Jewish Studies at Halle University, she is now director of the Old Synagogue – House of Jewish Culture in Essen. Diana was the Joseph Kremen Memorial Fellow in East European Jewish Arts, Music, and Theatre at YIVO (New York). From 2019-2020, she convened the Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies and led a research group on Jewish Musical Cultures in Europe 1500-1750.

In 2019, Diana led the Henech Kon project with composer Josh Horowitz, bringing the only surviving pre-war European Yiddish opera back to the stage. She has worked with Yiddish Summer Weimar on projects including the Young Kadyas Choir; a CD of rediscovered Yiddish children’s songs called Far dem nayem dor – For the new generation; and the Glikl oratorye, focusing on the life of the early modern Jewish woman Glikl von Hameln, which Diana wrote with Alan Bern.

Photo: Alexander Schmalz