Dr Francesca Vella to be part of research network to investigate 19th-century Italian opera on a global scale

Dr Francesca Vella, a Research Fellow in Music at St John’s, will be part of a project starting in February 2016 to investigate the 19^th-century Italian Opera Industry, exploring existing ideas on the relationship between music and national identity. 

Dr Vella will lead the three-year project, titled ‘Re-imagining Italianità: Opera and Musical Culture in Transnational Perspective’, in partnership with Axel Körner (University College London), Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg (Brown University, USA) and Paulo Kühl (Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil).

 The research project has been made possible thanks to a grant of over £124,000 awarded to University College London by the Leverhulme Trust.  

Based on a cross-disciplinary collaboration, and through a number of workshops and international conferences, the research will explore nineteenth-century discourses on music and national character; trace the global circulation of people, ideas and goods associated with the Italian opera industry; and examine particular cities and institutions as sites of cultural encounters.