Francesco IZZO

Francesco Izzo is a musicologist, pianist, and coach specialising in nineteenth-century opera, focussing in particular on questions of genre, textual criticism, and performance practice.  He is Professor of Music at the University of Southampton, General Editor of The Works of Giuseppe Verdi (University of Chicago Press and Casa Ricordi) and Program Director of the Accademia Verdiana at Teatro Regio Parma.  He has authored the monograph Laughter between Two Revolutions: Opera buffa in Italy, 1831-1848 (2013) and edited the critical edition of Verdi’s Un giorno di regno (2021). He has also published numerous musicological studies in leading international scientific journals, from the Journal of the American Musicological Society to the Cambridge Opera Journal and Saggiatore musicale. He has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago, New York University, the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and currently the University of Venice ‘Ca’ Foscari’, and has collaborated with numerous theatres and opera festivals, including the Salzburg Festival, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Donizetti Festival, the Royal Opera House, the Welsh National Opera, the Teatro La Fenice and the opera theatres of Bilbao, Madrid, Munich, Naples, Palermo and Rome. Since 2017 he has been scientific director of the Verdi Festival in Parma and in 2021 he was scientific consultant of the Teatro Real in Madrid for the performance of Don Fernando el Emplazado by Valentín de Zubiaurre, of which he edited the critical edition for the Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales. As a pianist he has accompanied artists such as Barry Banks, Rockwell Blake, Leo Nucci, Lisette Oropesa, Michele Pertusi, Antonio Poli, Anna Pirozzi, Kevin Short and Giuseppe Taddei, and has acted as coach, mentor, and consultant for countless others. He is regularly invited to give conferences, workshops and masterclasses, including, recently, the Juilliard School, Princeton University, the Maastricht Conservatorium, the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana. In 2023 he was academic director of the first Córdoba International Opera Studio.