Lectures on Tap - "Beethoven vs. Napoleon"

📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email

🧠 Lecture: "Beethoven vs. Napoleon"

🎙️ Speaker: Dr. Tom Rizzuto

For most of his adult life, Ludwig van Beethoven carried on a bitter, one-sided feud with Napoleon Bonaparte—a man he never met and who had no idea the feud existed. Initially captivated by Napoleon’s revolutionary image, Beethoven even dedicated an entire symphony to him. But as Napoleon’s true ambitions emerged, Beethoven became disillusioned and famously rescinded the dedication.

In this engaging talk, Dr. Tom Rizzuto will reveal how Napoleon’s military campaigns through Austria upended Beethoven’s world, derailing his finances, contributing to the failure of his only opera, and even dividing the van Beethoven family politically. You’ll explore how one powerful ruler and one uncompromising composer clashed in ideals, ego, and legacy—and how that tension helped shape some of the most important music ever written.

Dr. Tom Rizzuto is a professor of music history, guitar, and media at Molloy University and SUNY Old Westbury. His research on music and cultural change has appeared in Discovery Magazine, History Magazine, Arts Education Policy Review, and on the Rock and Roll Archaeology podcast.

Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌