Mauro Calcagno

College House Fellow

Mauro Calcagno was born in Milan, raised in Rome, and trained as a pianist and musicologist before coming to the States for his doctorate at Yale in 1993. He then taught at Harvard and at Stony Brook University, before joining the Department of Music at Penn. His work so far has focused on music of the Renaissance and Baroque, but especially on opera--that wonderfully multi-media art form (born in Florence) that has been thriving for about 400 years now. His social and intellectual grow was profoundly shaped by attending a college immersed in the cultural life of a large city. One of his priorities at Penn is to experience the “town and gown” borders as permeable.
 

Mauro believes in the power of music--either as a performer or as a listener--as a tool of socialization, in forming communities, understanding the past, developing intellectually and emotionally, or simply having fun. He enjoys all arts, however, and looks forward to sharing his enthusiasm with all Rodinites. Since in his past Italian life he also worked for years as a journalist, he keeps up with this repressed passion by being an avid news-junkie. So he is eager to hear all kind of opinions from Rodinites on events in the world, in the US, Italy, and our exciting adopted city.