From Broadway to Hollywood: Puccini’s Enduring Blueprint for American Musical Storytelling

 

 

A panel discussion featuring

 

Virgilio Bernardoni, Vice President, Centro Studi Giacomo Puccini
Patrizia Mavilla, Director, Fondazione Simonetta Puccini per Giacomo Puccini
Carla Moreni, Music Critic, Il Sole 24 Ore (moderator)

 

with the participation of

 

Marco Peronaci, Ambassador of Italy to the US
Gianandrea Noseda, Music Director, National Symphony Orchestra

 

A cocktail reception will follow the conversation and will end at 7pm.

The Italian Cultural Society Gala Awards Dinner 2026 will start right after.
If you wish to attend the Gala, you can register here by April 19th.

 

 

Virgilio Bernardoni

Virgilio Bernardoni is an Italian musicologist and professor of Musicology and Music History at the Department of Humanities, Philosophy and Communication of the University of Bergamo.

His research activity focuses in particular on opera and on 19th- and 20th-century music, with studies ranging from the codification of dramaturgical types to the theory of musical composition, from creative processes to the themes and terminology of music criticism. He has devoted specific studies to important composers such as Giacomo Puccini, Ferruccio Busoni, Alfredo Casella, Gian Francesco Malipiero, and Luigi Dallapiccola.

He has published numerous scholarly articles and volumes. Among his most recent works are Literature, Music, Poetry. Exchanges and Correspondences between the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Carocci, 2022) and the monograph Puccini (il Saggiatore, 2023), which confirm his role as a leading figure in contemporary musicological studies.

Alongside his academic activity, Bernardoni holds prominent positions in editorial and scholarly fields: he is vice president and co-director of the series of the Centro Studi Giacomo Puccini and directs the series “Historiae Musicae Cultores” for the publisher Leo S. Olschki.

He also chairs the Scientific Commission established by the Italian Ministry of Culture for the National Edition of the Works of Giacomo Puccini, within which he has overseen the critical edition of Compositions for Organ (2018), Compositions for Piano, and Volume V of the Correspondence (2024).

 

Patrizia Mavilla

Patrizia Mavilla is an Italian cultural manager, and the director of the Simonetta Puccini Foundation for Giacomo Puccini, an institution dedicated to the protection and promotion of the legacy of the composer Giacomo Puccini.

She serves as director of the Foundation and is responsible for the overall management of the Puccini Villa Museum, as well as for the organization’s cultural, scientific, and administrative activities.

In her institutional role, she takes part in public initiatives and projects aimed at enhancing Puccini’s heritage, including the “Project 2024” for the redevelopment and preservation of places connected to the composer.

She also appears as a point of reference and director in the museum’s activities and in cultural initiatives linked to the Foundation, including events, exhibitions, and territorial promotion programs related to Torre del Lago Puccini.

 

Carla Moreni

Carla Moreni is an Italian musicologist, educator, and music critic. She graduated in flute from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory and has developed, from the very beginning, a strong connection to the world of music both from a performance perspective and from a theoretical and critical standpoint.

She has pursued an active journalistic career as a music critic for Il Sole 24 Ore, where in 2006 she curated the series “The Great Conductors,” dedicated to the most prominent figures in orchestral conducting.

Moreni has been writing about music since 1986, the year her graduation thesis was published as the first volume of the series “Music and Theater” by Amici della Scala. During her career, she collaborated for seven years with the newspaper Il Giorno and subsequently spent another seven years as head of music criticism for Avvenire.

In addition to print media, she has worked in radio, producing reports and correspondence for Rai Radio 3 and hosting a weekly music column for Rete Due RSI, establishing herself as an authoritative voice in contemporary music criticism.