Robert Avery, who accompanies all these tours (except Vicenza), founded Habsburg Heritage Cultural Tours in 1989. He read Modern History at Cambridge and then devoted twenty years to the Anglo-Austrian Society, pioneering cultural tours and helping to run the Youth and Music Festival in Vienna. He was editorial consultant to the Eyewitness Travel Guide to Vienna and was awarded the Silver Haydn Medal of the City of Eisenstadt. When not leading tours he can usually be found at the opera.

Jennifer Anderson, who accompanies our Vicenza tour, was fifteen years headmistress of a London school. She taught French and Italian after Cambridge, has taken many tours to different parts of Italy and leads Dante study courses at her home.

Lionel Friend, who lectures on the Dresden Ring, has conducted opera, ballet and concerts in Europe, North America and Australia.  While in demand for modern works with a long list of first performances, his main interest is Wagner and he has conducted all the operas and taught and coached most leading roles.

Richard Wigmore, who gives talks at Vicenza and the Eisenstadt Haydn Festival, is a writer and broadcaster on musical performance of the classical period. He will introduce the concerts. He read French and German at Cambridge and and gives classes in the history of the Lied at Birkbeck College, London University. His translations of all the Schubert songs were used in the recent Hyperion complete recordings. He has written a well received book on Haydn's life and work (Faber 2009).