Introduction

With a degree in Lettere e filosofia, a PhD in Storia dello spettacolo, and diplomas in piano and harpsichord, Andrea Chegai is a full professor at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. He conducts research into music in the cultures of the Ancien Régime (16th–18th centuries). His interests include also musical dramaturgy, historiography, philology, piano music and music education. He co-edits the biannual journal Il saggiatore musicale (Florence, L. Olschki, 1994-) and the series of critical editions Musica teatrale del Settecento italiano (Pisa, ETS). In 2025, he was awarded the “Luigi ed Eleonora Ronga” International Prize for musicological research by the Accademia dei Lincei (Rome).

Mila De Santis is Associate Professor of Musicology and History of Music at the University of Florence. Her research encompasses a wide range of topics in Italian music history from the eighteenth through the twentieth century, with a particular focus on composers such as Alfredo Casella, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Ferruccio Busoni, Luigi Dallapiccola, Alberto Savinio, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Luciano Berio. She has also made significant contributions to the fields of musical lexicography, music and poetry studies, music criticism, and musical dramaturgy. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Centro Studi Luciano Berio and of the editorial boards of the journals Chigiana and Civiltà musicale, and serves as director of the Musica|Toscana book series for Libreria Musicale Italiana. Her most recent book is Relazioni fruttuose. Incontri di musica e letteratura nel Novecento italiano (Quodlibet, Macerata, 2025). She was Principal Investigator of two PRIN projects (Projects of Relevant National Interest): Articoli musicali nei quotidiani italiani dell’Ottocento (“Musical Articles in Nineteenth-Century Italian Newspapers”) – ARTMUS (2012), and Mapping Musical Life. Urban Culture and the Local Press in Post-Unification Italy (MML) (2017).

Anna Tedesco is a full professor at the University of Palermo, where she teaches in the undergraduate programs in Humanities and in Music and Performing Arts, as well as in the master’s program in Music and Performing Arts, which she coordinated for two terms. She has also held various institutional positions. She is a member of the faculty of the Doctoral Program in Music and Performing Arts at Sapienza University of Rome. She has also taught at the universities of Salamanca and Madrid (Complutense). Her research, published in national and international journals, focuses on opera from the 17th to the 19th centuries: in particular, she has studied musical life in Palermo during the 17th and 18th centuries, the musical patronage of the Spanish aristocracy in modern Italy, the reception of grand opera in Italy, and the influence of Spanish comedia on 17th-century opera. More recently, she has been working on the reception of 17th-century opera in the 20th century, with a particular focus on Monteverdi and Cavalli. She served as the local coordinator for a 2017 PRIN project (“MML—Mapping Musical Life, Urban Culture, and the Local Press in Post-Unification Italy”). She is a member of the IMS Study Group “Cavalli and 17th-Century Venetian Opera.” She contributed to the Cavalli Critical Edition (Bärenreiter) by collaborating with Giuseppe Collisani and Nicola Badolato on the critical edition of Egisto. Together with Dinko Fabris, she edited a special issue of Musica e Storia (new series) on the reception of Monteverdi’s theater in Italy during the first half of the 20th century. She served as vice president of ADUIM (Association of Italian University Professors of Musicology). As president of the Associazione Amici del Teatro Massimo in Palermo, she is actively involved in promoting music and opera to the general public.