[2] He was befriended by Aaron Copland, who helped the young immigrant composer gain a professional footing by arranging performances of Franchetti's chamber music in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.[citation needed] Franchetti took a position at the Hartt School of Music, Hartford, Connecticut, in 1948, where he became chair of the theory and composition department, remaining there until his retirement in 1979.
[2] Franchetti's composition students have included: Barbara Kolb, Michael Schelle, Joel Pelletier, Robert Beaser, Jonathan Kramer, Martin Bresnick, film composers Jack Elliott, Ed Alton and Marcus Barone, Robert Lombardo, Henry Gwiazda, Norman Dinerstein, Gwynneth Van Anden Walker, Lee T. McQuillan and many others.
[1] In his early works, Franchetti experimented with late Romantic and neoclassical styles, but he then developed what Imanuel Willheim called "a non-serial, 12-note compositional language featuring primarily diatonic motivic material".
Franchetti composed numerous theatre works including the opera, Married Men Go to Hell (1974) and the genre-bending Dracula 1979.
Another important Franchetti theatrical work is Lazarus (for narrator and symphonic wind ensemble) based on the book Soul on Ice by 1960's Black Panther activist Eldridge Cleaver.