Francesca Vella

Assistant Professor

Department: Humanities

I was born and raised in Italy, where I studied Art, Music and Performing Arts at the University of Florence and piano at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, before moving to the UK to complete my postgraduate studies at King’s College London. Before joining Northumbria, I was a Junior Research Fellow at St John’s College, Cambridge and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Music of the University of Cambridge. I’ve also taught at Oxford Brookes, Goldsmiths and Bristol.

Email Francesca

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

19th- and 20th-century operatic cultures
theatre staging practices
voice and singers/singing
musical mobilities
global and transnational histories of music
sound studies
Italian cultural studies

My research considers histories and technologies of operatic performance across the 19th and early 20th centuries. I’ve published articles on Verdi and Italian nation-building, operatic mobility, vocal celebrity culture, and early radio. My first monograph, Networking Operatic Italy (University of Chicago Press, 2021) explores how networks of opera production and critical discourse enabled by new transport and communication technologies shaped Italian cultural identities during the years immediately preceding and following the country’s unification in 1861.

I’ve recently started a new book project about ideas and practices of operatic staging in early 20th-century Italy, at the intersection with developments in painting, cinema, spoken theatre and other arts. So far, I've researched cases studies focused on the 1930s Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and the shifting role of the opera prompter. With Ian Schofield, I'm also preparing a critical edition of Donizetti's Otto mesi in due ore for Ricordi.

My interest in sonic and auditory cultures led to the establishment of the ‘Sounding (Out) 19th-Century Italy’ research network (2019-20), funded by a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award. I was also a founding member of the Leverhulme network ‘Re-imagining italianità: Opera and Musical Culture in Transnational Perspective’ (2016-19), based at UCL and with collaborators at Cambridge, Brown (USA) and Campinas (Brazil).

I serve on the Advisory Board of Durham's Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, and I lead Northumbria's cross-university Music Research Group.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Networking Operatic Italy, Vella, F. 29 Nov 2021
Broadcasting the Italian Voice’s Broadcasting: Opera and Italy on the Air, 1920s-1930s, Vella, F. 8 Aug 2022, In: Journal of Modern Italian Studies
De(Railing) Mobility: Opera, Stasis, and Locomotion on Late-Nineteenth-Century Italian Tracks, Vella, F. 23 Oct 2018, In: Opera Quarterly
Jenny Lind, Voice, Celebrity, Vella, F. 1 May 2017, In: Music and Letters
Tamagno Otherwise: Verdi, ‘Ora e per sempre addio’ (Otello), Otello, Act II, Vella, F. 1 Jul 2016, In: Cambridge Opera Journal
Milan, Simon Boccanegra and the Late-Nineteenth-Century Operatic Museum, Vella, F. 2016, In: Verdi Perspektiven
Bridging Divides: Verdi’s Requiem in Post-Unification Italy, Vella, F. 2015, In: Journal of the Royal Musical Association
Verdi and Politics (c. 1859-61), Vella, F. 2014, In: Studi verdiani
Verdi’s Don Carlo as Monument, Vella, F. 14 Mar 2013, In: Cambridge Opera Journal
Not in their Minds, Vella, F. 1 May 2020, In: Journal of the Royal Musical Association

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Editorial work: Editio Musica (Publisher) 2019

Further Information

Teaching

I teach a range of modules on music from 1750 to the present, from historical, critical and analytical perspectives. Recent undergraduate options I have designed and delivered include 'Musicals: Politics, Performance and Popular Culture', 'Opera on Screen: From Silent Film to YouTube', and 'Opera in 18th- and 19th-century London'. At postgraduate level, I've taught a module on my research into Italian listening and auditory cultures, as well as seminars on research methodolodies, voice studies, music and the middlebrow, digital musicology, and music and the environment.

I'm always happy to discuss dissertation ideas with UG, MA and PhD students, so please feel free to get in touch.

Public engagement

I regularly write programme notes for UK and foreign opera companies (Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne Tour, Scottish Opera, Liceu Opera Barcelona), general readersip articles (Opera magazine), CD liner notes (Opera Rara) and performance reviews (bachtrack.com).