WRITER: MICHELLE MONCRIEFFE
CONTACT: LOIS GRAY
International Programs
Iowa City IA 52242
(319) 335-2026
e-mail: lois-gray@uiowa.edu

Release: Dec.. 3, 2001

Verdi lecture series ends with Dec. 10 presentation 'Verdi the Craftsman'

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- Philip Gossett, the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor of Music and the Humanities at the University of Chicago, will speak on, "Verdi the Craftsman," Monday, Dec. 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Voxman Music Building, Harper Hall, on the University of Iowa campus. This is the last of four lectures in the International Programs' Distinguished Lecture Series "Perspectives on the Music of Verdi." The lecture is free and open to the public and a reception will follow.

During the lecture, UI faculty member and baritone John Muriello will sing a recently discovered Verdi aria accompanied by Gossett on the piano. Gossett discovered the aria, which Verdi wrote for "Un ballo in maschera" but discarded before the premiere.

Gossett's honors include the Alfred Einstein Award of the American Musicological Society (1969), the Grand Ufficiale (1996) and Cavaliere di Gran Croce (1998) of the Italian government, honorary membership in the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna (1992), and fellowships from the NEH and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has served as president of the American Musicological Society and of the Society for Textual Scholarship. He is currently general editor for both "The Works of Giuseppe Verdi" and the "Edizione critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini" and serves on the editorial boards of "Nineteenth-Century Music," "Cambridge Opera Journal," and "Critical Inquiry." He has published widely on 19th-century music, Italian opera, especially Rossini and Verdi; Beethoven sketch studies, aesthetics, textual criticism, musical notation, and performance practice and frequently lectures and consults for opera houses and festivals in America and Italy.

Gossett is one of four experts who have visited the UI this fall to share their insights on the life and music of one of the most famous and popular composers of all times. The series is coordinated by Roberta Marvin, an associate professor in the UI School of Music, with support from International Programs, the Stanley-UI Foundation Support Organization and the Office of the Vice President for Research. The series is especially significant because it commemorates the 100th anniversary of the death of Verdi, Marvin said.

"These leading Verdi scholars are pioneers in shaping the current profile of opera studies," Marvin says. "This lecture series has been a tremendous opportunity to learn of insights from today's leading Verdi scholars from both sides of the Atlantic."

For more information or special accommodations to attend any of these lectures, contact Blythe Burkhardt, International Programs, (319) 335-1436.