Philip Gossett (September 27, 1941 – June 12, 2017)[1] was an American musicologist and historian, and Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor of Music at the University of Chicago.

Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera, a major work on the subject, won the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society as best book on music of 2006.

As he noted: "If you were going to be a serious musicologist, you had to study Beethoven or Bach or Gregorian chants, but Rossini -- that was a pretty funny idea" [4] However, he persisted and notes that "I went to Princeton University for graduate work in musicology (and) I fell more in love with the music and wrote my doctoral dissertation on the music of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi.

[3] Given that Gossett's musical interests focussed on 19th-century Italian opera (especially the works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi), most of his career was devoted to being General Editor of two important projects while at the University of Chicago: the research for the preparation of critical editions of all the operas of both Rossini (some 70) and Verdi (some 33, in their various forms).

[6] Elsewhere, he explained the overall aim of the production of critical editions of the operas by using the example of Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims: We used sources in Rome, Paris, Vienna, and New York.

In the US, he has consulted with the Houston Grand Opera (in 1979 for the first production of the critical edition of Tancredi, with its then newly discovered tragic ending, starring Marilyn Horne).

[13] Gossett again acted as consultant to The Santa Fe Opera during rehearsals for its 2012 season production of the new critical edition of Rossini's original Maometto II of 1820 and he returned in the same capacity during rehearsals of the company's new production of Rossini's La donna del lago during the 2013 season.

[14] For the 2010 presentations of Verdi's Attila for the Met, Gossett also worked with conductor Riccardo Muti on revisions to the score based on new research.

Musicologist Roger Parker, General Editor of The Critical Edition of the Operas of Gaetano Donizetti (Casa Ricordi, Milan) Notes Cited sources