Professor Francesco Izzo
Professor of Music and Postgraduate Taught Admissions Tutor
Professor Francesco Izzo is a Professor of Music at the University of Southampton and Postgraduate Admission Tutor in Music for the academic year 2019-2020.
Higher education is one of my great passions, and my teaching interests are wide-ranging. Here at Southampton I offer a variety of undergraduate modules in music theory and history, opera, and the representation of meaning and feeling. I often teach modules in opera and in introductory music theory; in 2019-20, I am teaching Exploring Music II and Fundamentals of Analysis, Counterpoint and Harmony for first year-students, as well as a module on the operas of Benjamin Britten. I am also leading the third-year Research Project, and I will be closely involved in the delivery of performance teaching, offering masterclasses and workshops on the performance of Italian opera for voice students.
In my lectures I aim to create an informal and collegial environment conducive to student participation and interaction. It is by asking questions and discussing them openly and critically, I believe, that we can truly enhance the learning experience beyond the mere sharing of information. My lectures often include a certain amount of music-making—be it explore a Beethoven composition or a pop song at the piano, or sing through a Christmas carol or an opera chorus as a group. I have supervised undergraduate research projects on a variety of subjects, including film music, late twentieth-century musical theatre, the analysis of Beethoven’s piano works, and a range of opera topics. Here at Southampton I have also supervised numerous MMus and PhD theses, including various critical editions of instrumental and vocal music and analytical studies of Beethoven’s music. One of my recent PhDs supervisees, Candida Mantica, reconstructed and edited Donizetti’s L’ange de Nisida, and her research and edition led to the world premiere of this work by Opera Rara at the Royal Opera House in July 2018.
My research focuses on 19th-century opera, concentrating in particular on the works of Giuseppe Verdi.
I have published articles in leading journals such as Acta Musicologica, Cambridge Opera Journal and the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and in numerous dictionaries and collections of essays. My book, Laughter between Two Revolutions: Opera buffa in Italy, 1831–1848, appeared in 2013 with University of Rochester Press. I regularly present papers at leading international conferences, as well as lectures and seminars at universities and institutions in Europe and North America, including the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the University of Pavia, New York University, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago. I currently serve as Co-Director of the American Institute for Verdi Studies and as General Editor of ‘The Works of Giuseppe Verdi’ – a series co-published by Ricordi and the University of Chicago Press that will make available all of Verdi’s works in complete and textually accurate readings.
My work on opera and critical editions involves a significant amount of presentations to general audiences, media appearances, and consulting with opera companies. I collaborate regularly with companies including the Welsh National Opera, the Royal Opera House, the leading opera houses of Bilbao, Madrid, Munich, Naples, Palermo, and Rome, the Donizetti Festival, the Glyndebourne Festival, and the Salzburg Festival. I am also the scholar-in-residence at Sarasota Opera, and since 2017 I direct the Scientific Committee of Festival Verdi in Parma, where I regularly provide guidance and support for leading operatic productions. In the recent past I’ve had the pleasure of working and consulting with such conductors as Roberto Abbado, Daniele Callegari, Victor DeRenzi, and Nicola Luisotti, stage directors as Hugo de Ana and Graham Vick, and singers including Juan Diego Flórez, Annick Massis, Lisette Oropesa, and Michele Pertusi. I also deliver workshops and seminars on vocal style and operatic performance, and have recently worked with talented young artists at the Juilliard School in New York, the Accademia Verdiana in Parma, and the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano. A former student in the United States, mezzosoprano Deborah Nansteel, recently made her Metropolitan Opera debut, and I was thrilled to have the chance to applaud her in person.