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Roland John Wiley

About this Artist

ROLAND JOHN WILEY, Emeritus Professor of Music History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, was born and spent his childhood in southern California.  He took his A.B. in music from Stanford, then served in the United States Navy before pursuing graduate studies at Harvard, where he wrote a doctoral dissertation on Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.  He served on the faculty at Michigan for the next 38 years.

Wiley's publications include Tchaikovsky's Ballets, A Century of Russian Ballet, The Life and Ballets of Lev Ivanov, and the biography Tchaikovsky--all published by Oxford University Press.  He wrote the entry on 'Tchaikovsky' for the latest edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians together with numerous articles about Russian music and ballet.  He has served as production consultant for the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden's revivals of The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, and as writer and translator for other professional theatre companies.