Roger Parker (born London United Kingdom, 2 August 1951) is an English musicologist, and is currently Thurston Dart Professor of Music at King's College London.
He studied at the University of London, first at Goldsmiths' College, then at King's College London. In 1982, he moved to Cornell University in upstate New York, where he was Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor. In 1994 he came back to England to become a Lecturer in Music (later Professor) and Fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford. In 1999 he became Professor of Music at Cambridge University, where he was a Fellow of St John's College and (in 2005-6) Chair of the School of Arts and Humanities. In 2002 he was the Visiting Ernest Bloch Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley; in 2007 he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Roger Parker's work has centred on opera, in particular Italian opera of the nineteenth century. For ten years he was founding co-editor (with Arthur Groos) of the Cambridge Opera Journal, and he continues as General Editor (with Gabriele Dotto) of the The Critical Edition of the Operas of Gaetano Donizetti published by Casa Ricordi of Milan.
He received the "Premio Giuseppe Verdi" in 1986, was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1986-7, and in 1991 was awarded the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association.
In 2007 he became Professor of Music at Gresham College, London, in which post he gives free public lectures.
Musicologist Philip Gossett (General Editor of critical editions of Giuseppe Verdi and Gioachino Rossini's operas.)