Berta is a music scholar, critic, journalist and project consultant embracing technology to advance musical practice and research.
She contributes regularly to the BBC Music Magazine, to BBC Radio 3 broadcasts, and has been a featured guest on BBC Television 4 series Rule Britannia. She has advised on projects by BBC Television 4, EMI and Oppella Nova Records, and is an ‘on call’ panel member of ENO’s Join the Conversation pre-concert talks and podcasts. She enjoys fruitful collaborations with the music director and Hyperion recording artist, Dr Zak Ozmo, who directs L’Avventura London.
She champions digital media as a means to transform music and knowledge about music. As the Senior Editor of Thomas Arne’s Love in a Village, to be published by Bärenreiter Verlag, she joins the team of OPERA – Spektrum des europäischen Musiktheaters in Einzeleditionen – a 15-year project funded by the Academy of Sciences and Literature of Mainz, Germany. OPERA organizes, explains and gives access to the primary sources that underpin previously unpublished works issued in critical editions online, and by Bärenreiter.
Berta is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Music, Goldsmiths. As an established female academic, she hopes to encourage other women to take up leadership roles in and outside the academy.
Samples of BBC MM reviews: Magnificat – The Tudors at Prayer, Don Giovanni – Dmitri Tcherniakov, BBC MM Jury: Awards 2011.
Kitty Clive, oil by Willem Verelst