BIOGRAPHY

Francesco Izzo is a musicologist and pianist specialising in nineteenth-century opera and vocal music. He is Professor of Music at the University of Southampton, where he teaches and supervises research in opera, vocal performance practice, and textual criticism. He is the author of Laughter between Two Revolutions: Opera buffa in Italy, 1831–1848 (University of Rochester Press) and serves as General Editor of the critical edition The Works of Giuseppe Verdi (University of Chicago Press and Casa Ricordi), for which he has edited Un giorno di regno. As a pianist, he has performed with leading artists including Francesca Aspromonte, Leo Nucci, Lisette Oropesa, Michele Pertusi, and Riccardo Zanellato.

He has held visiting professorships at the University of Chicago, New York University, the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Before joining Southampton, he taught at East Carolina University and held fellowships at New York University (where he earned his PhD) and Princeton University.

As a specialist of vocal performance practices of the 19th century, over the years Francesco has accompanied performances by Barry Banks, Rockwell Blake, Kevin Short, and Giuseppe Taddei, and has coached and consulted for many more.  Recent highlights include performances with Leo Nucci and Juan Jesús Rodríguez in Bilbao; Anna Pirozzi, Michele Pertusi, and Riccardo Zanellato in Parma; Francesca Aspromonte in Córdoba; and Antonio Poli in New York.  His acclaimed 2021 recital with soprano Lisette Oropesa at Parma's Teatro Regio attracted worldwide attention as a student joined in spontaneously from the audience during an encore performance of "Sempre libera" from Verdi's La traviata.

Committed to bridging scholarship and performance, he has served as scholar-in-residence at Sarasota Opera and, since 2017, as principal scholarly advisor to Festival Verdi Parma, which received the International Opera Award for Best Festival during his tenure. He has advised conductors including Roberto Abbado, Daniele Callegari, Francesco Lanzillotta, Michele Mariotti, Francesco Pasqualetti, and Sebastiano Rolli; stage directors Hugo de Ana, Leo Muscato, and Graham Vick; and numerous leading singers, among them Joyce El-Khoury, Annick Massis, Michele Pertusi, Piero Pretti, Ramón Vargas, Franco Vassallo.  He has also contributed lectures and written and media content to major institutions including the Salzburg Festival, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Donizetti Festival, the Royal Opera House, Welsh National Opera, the Teatro La Fenice, and companies in Bilbao Madrid, Munich, Naples, Palermo, and Rome.

Francesco is frequently invited to deliver lectures, workshops, and masterclasses—including recent visits to the Juilliard School, Princeton University, Conservatorium Maastricht, the Mannes School of Music, and the University of Maryland.  In 2021 he was scholarly consultant at the Teatro real in Madrid for the premiere modern performance of Valentín de Zubiaurre’s Don Fernando el Emplazado, of which he has prepared the critical edition for the Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales.  In 2022 and 2025 he worked alongside conductor Sebastiano Rolli in productions of Giuseppe Verdi's I lombardi alla prima crociata and Attila at Venice's Teatro La Fenice.

In 2023 he was appointed program director of the Accademia Verdiana, the young artists' program of the Teatro Regio in Parma, for which he had been delivering workshops and masterclasses since 2018.  In the same year he becane the first academic director of the Córdoba International Ópera Studio, where in three consecutive years he has led the training of young artists informing the performance practices of productions of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, Mozart's Don Giovanni, and Verdi's Rigoletto.  In 2025 he presented masterclasses for Accademia Monte Verità in Xi'an, where he also served on the jury of the Second China Verdi Competition.  Recently, he has participated in the young artist training programmes of Accademia Monte Verità at the Norwegian National Opera in Oslo and Beijing.

Francesco's plans for 2025-26 include teaching courses in opera and music history, supervision of PhD students, and development of opera-related training and performance activities at his home institution, the University of Southampton.  Current projects include leading a new opera studio in Córdoba and a new Accademia Verdiana masterclass at New York University, and performing in concerts at Parma's Teatro Regio, Southampton's Turner Sims Concert Hall, Córdoba's Real Círculo de la Amistad, and Mantua's Trame Sonore festival.