TOSCANI CLAUDIO

Claudio Toscani is Associate Professor of History of Opera (Storia del melodramma) and Music Philology (Filologia musicale) at the Università degli Studi in Milan. He studied music and musicology at Parma Conservatory, Milan Conservatory and at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna. He took a degree in Foreign Languages and Literature at Parma University, and earned a doctorate in Musicology at Bologna University (PhD diss. «I Capuleti e i Montecchi di Vincenzo Bellini: l’edizione critica»), simultaneously attending courses and carrying out researches at the University of Chicago and the Sorbonne in Paris.

He has taught Music Analysis at Milan Conservatory (Musicology Department, 1991-2000). From 1994 to 2000 he has also taught Music History at Potenza and Trento Conservatories and, from 1997 to 2009, Modern and Contemporary Music History (Storia della musica moderna e contemporanea), History and Criticism of the Musical Text (Storia e critica del testo musicale) and Music Analysis (Analisi musicale) at the Università degli Studi in Milan.

Since 2002 he is acting professor of the PhD programme Scienze del patrimonio letterario, artistico e ambientale (Literature, Arts and Environmental Heritage) at the University of Milan. He was invited for courses, seminars and conferences from musical institutions and universities in Italy and abroad (Universities of Turin, Florence, Milan-Statale, Milan-Bicocca, Milan-Iulm, Insubria, Rome, Ferrara, Tours, Fribourg, Graz). He held courses in music analysis at the Conservatories of Piacenza (1994), Potenza (1996), Brescia (1996-1998), Milan (2000), Como (2000).

Toscani has obtained (2012) from the National Scientific Habilitation (ASN) the qualification of full professor.

He was member of the local Unit (University of Milan) of the National Research Projects PRIN 2000, PRIN 2002, PRIN 2005. He was Associate Investigator of the Milan Unit for the Research Program «Italian opera librettos from the 18th century (Mariani, Federico, Metastasio, Goldoni, Verazi). Variants from manuscripts and print sources», funded by the Italian Ministero per l’Università e la Ricerca Scientifica (FIRB 2006) and by the Universities of Padova, Milan and Siena. He has acted in the same position for the National Research Projects «Critical editions of Italian composers from 17th to 20th century», founded by the Italian Ministero per l’Università e la Ricerca Scientifica (PRIN 2007 and PRIN 2009) and by the Universities of Pavia, Roma “La Sapienza”, Milan, Ferrara, Padova, Siena, and Bologna. He was Principal Investigator for two research projects founded by the Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde («L’Archivio storico della Polifonica Ambrosiana: un giacimento musicale») and for a project founded by the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali («Edizione critica degli intermezzi di Pietro Metastasio»).

Claudio Toscani participated in many international meetings of musicology and has published several essays, chiefly on the history of Italian opera in the 18th and 19th centuries. He planned and organized international conferences:
- «Musica e architettura nell’età di Giuseppe Terragni (1904-1943)» (Milan 2005);
- «Pietro Gnocchi e la musica a Brescia nel Settecento» (Brescia 2007);
- «G.B. Pergolesi: la critica dei testi, i testi della critica» (Milan 2010);
- «La musica sacra nella Milano del Settecento» (Milan 2011);
- «Mozart e la musica sacra italiana» (Pavia 2015);
- «Music Pedagogy in Eighteenth-Century Naples: Theory, Sources and Reception» (Milan-Bern 2017).
He was a member of the scientific board of the international conference «Interpretare Mozart» (Milan 2006), of the exhibition «La città cantante: sacro e teatro a Napoli nel Settecento» (Naples 2009), of the international conference «G. B. Pergolesi und die Überlieferung und Rezeption der neapolitanischen Musik in Sachsen und Böhmen» (Dresden 2010), of the international conference «Verdi e il grottesco» (Milan 2013), of the workshop «Musica, lettere e istituzioni a Milano nell’età di Luigi Marchesi» (Milan 2015), of the international conference «Luigi Marchesi (1754-1829): carriera di un evirato cantore» (Bergamo 2015), of the international conference «Entremets e intermezzi» (Reggio Calabria 2017), of the Giornata di studi «Francesco Pasquale Ricci da Como all’Europa (1732-1817)» (Como 2018), of the international conference «Antonino Votto» (Milan 2019), and of the international conference «Francesco Pollini e il mondo musicale di primo Ottocento» (Milan 2021).

He has published the critical edition of:
- Gaetano Donizetti, «La fille du régiment» (2021);
- Vincenzo Bellini, «I Capuleti e i Montecchi» (2003);
- Giuseppe Verdi, «Les vêpres siciliennes», revised edition on the original sources (1997);
- Vincenzo Bellini, «I puritani», edition of the neapolitan version (1993, in cooperation with Philip Gossett);
- Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, «L’Olimpiade» (2002, in cooperation with Francesco Degrada);
- Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, «Il prigionier superbo» (2017, vol. I/2 of the Edizione Nazionale);
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, «Le devin du village» (2004);
- Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, «Stabat mater» (2012, vol. VI of the Edizione Nazionale);
- Pietro Gnocchi, Sei Concerti per archi (2012);
- Johann Adolf Hasse, intermezzi «La finta tedesca» (2014);
- Domenico Sarri, intermezzi «L’impresario delle Canarie» (2016).

He is a member of the advisory committee for the critical edition of Vincenzo Bellini’s works (Ricordi), of the editorial board for the edition of the Works of Gioachino Rossini (Bärenreiter), of the editorial board of the Edizione Nazionale Donizetti (Ricordi), of the scientific committee for the critical edition of the works of Giacomo Puccini (Ricordi), and of the Pergolesi scientific committee at the Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini. As a member of the governing board of the Italian Society of Music Analysis, Toscani has been its representative in the scientific committee of the European Societies of Music Analysis. He is scientific director of the Fondazione Simonetta Puccini.

Toscani has set up the Centro Studi Pergolesi in 2008, wich is supervised by a scientific committee in which he serves as director. Mission of the CSP is to collect and exploit musical, literary and documentary material connected to Pergolesi, as scientific support for the critical edition of his works. Since 2009 Toscani is member of the musicological board and director of the Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di G.B. Pergolesi, published by Casa Ricordi. Since 2013 he is director of the series of critical editions «Intermezzi Napoletani del Settecento», published by ETS.

He is author of dictionary entries for «The New Grove Dictionary of Opera», the «Dizionario degli editori musicali italiani dal ’500 al ’900» edited by the Italian Musicological Society, the «Dizionario dell’opera» Baldini & Castoldi, «Encyclomedia» edited by Umberto Eco, «The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians», «Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart» (MGG), the «Dizionario biografico degli italiani».

He has collaborated, giving lectures and writing programme notes, with La Scala (Milan), La Fenice (Venice), the Teatro dell’Opera (Rome), the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Teatro Valli (Reggio Emilia), the Società del Quartetto (Milan), the Teatro Donizetti (Bergamo), the Festival del Barocco Musicale (Fano), the Teatro Massimo (Palermo), the Teatro Sociale (Como), the Teatro Ponchielli (Cremona), the Teatro dell’Opera di Lecce, the Accademia di Musica Antica di Rovereto, the Teatro Massimo Bellini (Catania), the Radio Svizzera Italiana, the Swiss Musicological Society. From 2018 he is the president of the Orchestra dell’Università degli Studi di Milano.

He contributed to the journals «Amadeus», «Analisi», «Arione», «Aulos», «La Cartellina», «Drammaturgia», «Focus Storia», «Fonti musicali italiane», «Il giornale della musica», «L’Indice», «Journal of the American Musicological Society», «Musik und Aesthetik», «Il Saggiatore musicale», «Sonus», «Studi musicali», «VerdiPerspektiven». He is a member of the scientific committee of the «Bollettino di studi belliniani», the editorial board of «Pergolesi Studies», and the scientific committee of the «Quaderni dell’Istituto Liszt». From 2022 he is director of the «Quaderni dell’Istituto Liszt».

From 2012 to 2018 he was director of the «Rivista italiana di musicologia». From 2018 he is the president of the Italian Musicological Society.