Michele GIRARDI

Michele Girardi, CV

Born in Venice on May 3, 1954, he graduated in Modern Literature at the University of Venice Ca 'Foscari in 1980, where he is currently a professor of Music History and a member of the College of the PhD in the history of the arts. He taught history and musical aesthetics in the "Arrigo Boito" Conservatory of Parma (1984-1988), and in the Conservatory of Mantua (1989-1998), he was associate professor in the SSD L-ART / 07 (macro sector 10 / C1) with the post of Musical Dramaturgy at the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage of the University of Pavia in Cremona, and member of the PhD in Musicology and Cultural Heritage. He has participated in commissions for the awarding of PhDs and promotion of professors in European and US universities, and is currently a peer reviewer. He achieved scientific qualification in the first round for the role of full-time professor (2012), which was then reconfirmed in the last quarter of 2018.
He has participated in research projects promoted by the Freie Universität Berlin and by the University of Maryland at College Park (1991-1992), and has collaborated with the Levi Foundation of Venice and Asolo Musica, as a teacher of musical forms in the courses of high specialization for string quartet (1990 and 1992) and for substitute masters (1992). In 1995 he was invited as guest professor by the «Leos Janácek» Academy in Brno, in 1999 by Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, in 2003 by Universität Bern, in 2012 by Université de Paris 8. He also conceived and organized round tables and international conferences (on Meyerbeer, 2007; on Puccini, 2000 and 2008; on issues of opera direction, 2012 and 2014). He has been and is often a speaker at international conferences (the most recent: Caruso 100; Naples, October 2021), and to hold conferences in universities and theatrical associations. In 1996 he founded, together with other specialists, the GIACOMO PUCCINI Study Center of Lucca, in whose activities he participates as a member of the scientific committee, of the editorial staff of the journal "Studi pucciniani" (1998-) of which he has been editor since 2016 , as well as coordinator of the working group on Scenic Arrangements and Livrets de mise en scène. He is also a member of various editorial and scientific committees.

His interests are mainly directed to the music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and above all to the fin de siècle musical theater. He is the author of extensive essays on Puccini (1982-2017), Boito (1986-2018), Berg (1989) and Verdi (1991-2001) which have appeared in books and specialized magazines. In particular, he deepened the study of Giacomo Puccini's musical theater, to which he dedicated an extensive critical monograph, which appeared for the types of Marsilio in 1995. With this volume he won the first edition of the "Massimo Mila" international literary prize for musical essays (Turin, 1996). The revised and expanded version (Puccini. His International Art) appeared in English in June 2000, at the University of Chicago Press (first paperback reprint: 2002). In 2021 he was awarded the 49th Puccini Prize of the city of Viareggio, which went for the second time to a musicologist (the first was Mosco Carner in 1984).
As a co-author he has written a chronology of the shows in two volumes (with Franco Rossi, Venice, Marsilio-Albrizzi, 1989 and 1992), and a history of the production system of the Teatro La Fenice in Venice (with Anna Laura Bellina, Venice, Marsilio , 2003); he has edited several editions of music from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From 1993 to 1995 he was the consultant for scientific publications in the music sector of the publishing house "Il Saggiatore". From 2002 he was editorial and musicological director of the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, and, from November 2002 to November 2015, he curated the series "La Fenice before the opera" (ISSN 2280-8116); he also co-directs, together with Guido Paduano, the series «Music and literature».

He has collaborated with important national and European institutions as the author of encyclopedia entries (New Grove Dictionary of Opera and New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters), and collaborates with major Italian and foreign theaters and major record companies for the drafting of introductory notes to theatrical programs and recordings, and with popular magazines. He is often invited to cultural television broadcasts, and has appeared in numerous musical documentaries in Italy, Europe and Asia. He conceived and curated the exhibitions Appunti per un centenario, set up by the Teatro regio of Turin to celebrate the centenary of La Bohème (1996) and Tosca 1800 1900 2000, (2000), also organizing a conference in two sessions on the occasion of the first centenary di Tosca (Cremona and Lucca, University of Pavia and GIACOMO PUCCINI centro studi). As part of the celebrations for the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Puccini's birth, he conceived and coordinated the second of four sessions, Staging Puccini, yesterday and today (2008).

He was a member of the National Committee for the celebrations of the first centennial of the death of Arrigo Boito (2018), currently he is a member of the Scientific Committee of "Studi verdiani" (2019) and of the editorial board of "Venezia Arti" . Head of the research unit of the University of Pavia in projects co-financed by the Ministry of University and Scientific Research (2000-2004), and coordinator of University projects, Girardi was also a member of the National Committee for celebrations Verdi of 2001 and of the scientific commission of the National Committee for the Puccini celebrations 2004-2008. Recently appointed by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, together with those of education and the University (2022), he is one of "the four outstanding exponents of Italian and European music culture and art, experts in the life and works of Giacomo Puccini », in view of the celebrations for the centenary of his death (2024).From September 2007 to March 2012 he chaired the national edition of Giacomo Puccini's works, and is still a member of the scientific commission in charge of the edition, as well as of the editorial committees for music and correspondence, and responsible for what oversees the series of Scenic Arrangements and Livrets de mise en scène. In this context, his latest monograph, dedicated to the mise en scène of Madama Butterfly, directed by Albert Carré (Paris, 1906), for the types of EDT (December 2012), the critical edition of the Prelude to orchestra in E and the symphonic Prelude in A, for the types of Carus Verlag (Stuttgart, 2015).

He founded and coordinates a study group dedicated to Melodrama in the light of history, which is part of the research groups active at the Levi Foundation in Venice (2020). He is currently preparing the new edition of his monograph on Puccini (2024), a monograph dedicated to intertextuality in the nineteenth-twentieth century opera house, and another on the relationship between Giulio Ricordi and Giacomo Puccini.

Awards and acknowledgments

1996 "Massimo Mila" International Literary Prize for musical essays to Michele Girardi for the book Giacomo Puccini. The international art of an Italian musician, published by Marsilio (1995). The jury, chaired by Anna Mila Giubertoni, was made up of Luciano Berio, Piero Gelli, Giovanni Morelli, Giorgio Pestelli and Armando Torno.

2021 49th Puccini Prize of the Puccini Festival of Torre del Lago, awarded by the Municipality of Viareggio and the Puccini Festival Foundation, for its research and dissemination of Puccini's work. Before him, this recognition had been awarded to the father of modern Puccini studies, Mosco Carner.

2022 Appointed among "the four distinguished exponents of Italian and European music culture and art experts in the life and works of Giacomo Puccini",  Michele Girardi will be part of the committee promoting the celebrations for the centenary of his death (2024) .