Martha Feldman

University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois ~Edwin A. and Betty L. Distinguished Service Professor of Music and the Humanities. Cultural historian of European vernacular musics in the early modern and modern periods, with a concentration on Italy. Explores the senses and sensibilities of listeners; the interplay of myth, festivity, and kingship in the realm opera; cinema and media; and the figure of the musical artist, always with an eye toward social and political phenomena and artistic production. First monograph, City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice (1995), received the Bainton Prize from the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference and the Centre for Reformation Studies. Co-edited book The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (2006) received the 2007 Ruth A. Solie Award from the American Musicological Society. Extended essay Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italy (2007) received the Gordon J. Laing Award from the University of Chicago Press. Current work, The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds, is based on her Bloch Lectures at Berkeley (2007), received the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society. The Castrato Phantom: Moreschi, Fellini, and the Sacred Vernacular in Rome, exploring the afterlife of the castrato phenomenon is forthcoming. Appointed a Getty Scholar at the Getty Research Institute (1998-1999). Served as Visiting Professor at the Università degli Studi di Pavia at Cremona (2010). Awarded the Dent Medal from the Royal Musical Association for outstanding work in musicology (2001) and the Graduate Teaching Award of the University of Chicago (2009). President, American Musicological Society, 2017-18. Associate producer of recent albums by Patricia Barber.