Laura Basini
Publications | Research Interests | Professional Associations
| Title: | Associate Professor of Music History |
| Office Hours: |
Tuesday 12-12.45, Thursday 12-12.45, and by appointment |
| E-mail: | lbasini@csus.edu |
| Office Phone: |
(916) 278-7980 |
| Mailing Address: |
Department of Music |
Laura Basini holds a B.A. in Music from Oxford University (England), and a Ph.D. in the History and Literature of Music from the University of California, Berkeley. Before taking up her current position at C.S.U.S., she held a Mellon Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Basini has presented at international musicology colloquia and conferences including events at Duke University, Cambridge University (England), Georgetown University, Yale University, Lucca (Italy), and the University of Toronto. Her writing has been published in Cambridge Opera Journal, 19th-Century Music, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Opera Quarterly, and Journal of Musicological Research.
Dr. Basini’s research investigates the relationships between music and politics, particularly in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italy. She has published on the influences of post-Unification politics on the late music of Verdi, the appropriation of Verdi as a political figurehead in twentieth-century architecture and film, and the music of Puccini. Dr. Basini’s secondary fields of study include music in the fascist era, ideologies of neoclassicism, and film music. Her most recent work examines images of America in late nineteenth-century Italian opera. Dr. Basini serves on the editorial board of the journal Music and Politics (www.lukema.net/map). She has lectured and interviewed for the San Francisco Opera Guild, the San Francisco Historical Society, San Jose Mercury News, and KQED Public Radio's California Report.
Publications
Entries for the Cambridge Verdi Encyclopedia (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), ed. Roberta Marvin. Entries include "Religion," "Ave Maria sulla scala enigmatica," "Laudi alla vergine Maria," "Stabat Mater," "Te Deum," "Quattro pezzi sacri," "Opprandino Arrivabene," "Giuseppe Gallignani," "Goffredo Mameli," "Giuseppe Piroli," "Alberto Mazzucato," and others.
Review of Marcia Citron, When Opera Meets Film (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Notes: A Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, forthcoming.
Review of Virgilio Bernardoni, Verso Boheme. Gli abozzi del libretto negli archivi di Giuseppe Giacosa e Luigi Illica (Florence: Olschki, 2008). Il saggiatore musicale, forthcoming.
Review of Konrad Dryden, Franco Alfano. Transcending Turandot (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010). Notes: A Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 67/1 (September 2010), 112-114.
“Manon Lescaut and the Myth of America."Opera Quarterly 24/1-2 (Winter-Spring 2008), 62-81.
"Masks, Minuets, and Murder: Images of Italy in Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 133/1 (2008), 132-168.
"From Hammerstein to Hip-Hopera: Carmen on Film," Quaderni della Fondazione Donizetti, forthcoming.
"Bleak Realities: Visions of Verismo in Giancarlo Del Monaco's Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci." Review of Opus Arte DVD (OA0983) for Nineteenth-Century Music Review, forthcoming.
“Puccini’s Humming Chorus with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle,” Madama Butterfly. L'orientalismo di fine secolo, l'approccio pucciniano, la ricezione. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Lucca-Torre del Lago 28-30 maggio 2004, ed. Arthur Groos and Virgilio Bernardoni. Florence: Olschki, 2008, 393-404.
Review of Michal Grover-Friedlander, Vocal Apparitions. The Attraction of Cinema to Opera (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). Music and Letters 87/4 (2006), 683-685.
Review of Annie J. Randall and Rosalind Gray Davis, Puccini and the Girl: History and Reception of The Girl of the Golden West (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005). Journal of Musicological Research 24/3-4 (July-December 2005), 345-348.
“The Plays of Art are for a Playful Art: History, Puzzles, and Play in Verdi's Falstaff,” University of Toronto Quarterly 74/2 (Spring 2005), 740-749. Special Issue: Opera and Interdisciplinarity II.
“Verdi and Sacred Revivalism in Post-Unification Italy,” 19th-Century Music 28/2 (Fall 2004), 133-159.
“Remembering Verdi in Post-War Italian Film,” Verdi 2001. Atti del convegno internazionale, Parma-New York-New Haven, ed. Roberta Marvin and Fabrizio Della Seta. Florence: Olschki, 2002, 671-679.
‘“Cults of Sacred Memory’: Parma and the Verdi Centennial Celebrations of 1913,” Cambridge Opera Journal 13/2 (July 2001), pp. 141-161.
Research Interests
- Music and politics; Italian opera; music in the fascist era; ideologies of neoclassicism; film music.
Professional Associations
Last updated: 08/30/2011
