Department of Music

Biography

Prior to her graduate work she taught music privately and in public schools in Missouri and Illinois. Her academic career began in 1981, when she was appointed professor of music at the University of Virginia, where she was also chair of the music department (1988–95, 1998–9). Her dissertation on Jommelli's last years proved to be the starting point for extensive, wide-ranging studies on 18th-century Italian opera, in particular treating the innovations and modifications in opera seria during the second half of the century; these studies have thrown new light on the background to the operas of Mozart, Haydn and Gluck, and have focussed scholarly attention on the librettist Mattia Verazi.

Writings

Niccolò Jommelli: the Last Years, 1769–1774 (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1978; Ann Arbor, 1980)

‘The Evolution of Jommelli's Operatic Style’, JAMS, xxxiii (1980), 326–55

‘Jommellis Opernsinfonien der 1750er Jahre und ihre Beziehung zum Mannheimer Stil’, Mannheim und Italien: Mannheim 1982, 97–120

‘Mattia Verazi and the Opera at Mannheim, Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg’, SMC, vii (1982), 99–136

‘Mozart's La clemenza di Tito and Opera seria in Florence in the 1780s as a Reflection of Leopold II's Musical Taste’, MJb 1984–5, 61–70

‘Jommelli's Last Opera for Germany: the Opera seria-comica La schiava liberata (Ludwigsburg, 1768)’, CMc, no.39 (1985), 7–20

with D.P. Walker: ‘U.S. RISM Libretto Project’, Notes, xliii (1986–7), 19–35

‘The Venetian Role in the Transformation of Italian Opera seria during the 1790s’, I vicini di Mozart: Venice 1987, 221–40

‘Mannheim, Idomeneo, and the Franco-Italian Synthesis in Opera seria’, Mozart und Mannheim: Mannheim 1991, 187–96

‘Haydn and the Opera seria Tradition’, Napoli e il teatro musicale in Europa tra Sette e Ottocento: Studi in onore di Friedrich Lippmann, ed. B.M. Antolini and W. Witzenmann (Florence, 1993), 191–206

‘Two Early Romantic Operas with Iberian Roots: Il conte di Saldagna and Ines de Castro’, IMSCR XV: Madrid 1992 [RdMc, xvi (1993)], 3089–100

ed., with T. Bauman: Opera and the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1995) [incl. ‘Transforming Opera seria: Verazi's Innovations and their Impact on Opera in Italy’, 119–32]

‘The Great Quartet in Idomeneo and the Italian Opera seria Tradition’, Wolfgang Amadè Mozart: Essays on his Life and his Music, ed. S. Sadie (Oxford, 1996), 449–76

‘Jommelli, Verazi, und Vologeso: das hochdramatische Ergebnis einer schöpferischen Zusammenarbeit’, Musik in Baden-Württemberg, iii (1996), 213–22

‘Bianca de' Rossi as Play, Ballet and Opera: Contours of “Modern” Historical Tragedy in the 1790s’, Comparative Drama, xxxi (1997), 158–77

‘Mozart and his Contemporaries: Action Trios by Paisiello, Cimarosa, Martin and Mozart’, Festschrift Christoph-Hellmut Mahling, ed. A. Beer, K. Pfarr and W. Ruf (Tutzing, 1997), 853–82

‘Opera seria? Opera buffa? Genre and Style as a Sign’, Opera buffa in Mozart's Vienna, ed. M. Hunter and J. Webster (Cambridge, 1997), 197–231

‘Verazi's Controversial Drammi in azione as Realized in the Music of Salieri, Anfossi, Alessandri and Mortarelli for the Opening of La Sala 1778–1779’, Scritti in memoria Claudio Sartori, ed. M. Donà and F. Lesure (Lucca, 1997), 43–87