Helen Greenwald
Education and Training
BS and MA, Hofstra University; MPhil and PhD, City University of New York; Certificate with honors in German, University of Vienna. Cello studies with David Wells, George Ricci.
Awards and Recognition
Provost’s Scholar
Helen Greenwald
Division: College
Department: Music History and Musicology
Instrument: Cello
Helen Greenwald is a musicologist, cellist, and translator. Her scholarly interests center on vocal music of the 18th–20th centuries, and her work has appeared in such journals as 19th-Century Music, Acta Musicologica, Music & Letters, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Current Musicology, The Mozart-Jahrbuch, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, The Music Library Association’s Notes, Studi musicali toscani, Newsletter of the Résource Internationale d’Iconographie Musicale, Verdi Forum, and Cambridge Opera Journal.
She is the convenor and editor of the Oxford Handbook of Opera (Oxford University Press, 2014), a volume of fifty essays by an international array of scholars. Her critical edition of Rossini’s Zelmira (Fondazione Rossini/Ricordi, 2005) was premiered August 2009 at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Italy, under the direction of Roberto Abbado with Juan Diego Flórez in the role of Ilo, and was released on DVD (Decca, 2012).
Greenwald’s critical edition of Verdi’s Attila (University of Chicago Press; Ricordi, 2013) was premiered in 2010 by Riccardo Muti in his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, was selected as a featured project in 2013 by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). It was also selected by Riccardo Chailly to open La Scala’s 2018-19 season, and performed in Parma, Italy as part of the city’s annual Verdi Festival.
Greenwald has presented papers in the international forum, including the 1991 International Mozart Congress (Salzburg), the 2001 Verdi Congress (Parma), the Royal Music Association, the British Society for Music Analysis, the biannual British 19th-Century Music Conference, the Salzburg Symposium, the American Musicological Society, the International Musicological Society, the Society for Music Theory, the New England Conference of Music Theorists, the Music Theory Society of New York State, and the Modern Language Association. Greenwald was also a contributing curator and consultant to the international exhibition “La Scena di Puccini,” shown from September 2003 to February 2004 at the Fondazione Ragghianti in Lucca, Italy.
Greenwald also writes regularly for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, and the Metropolitan Opera. She was Visiting Professor of Music at the University of Chicago in 2008. Her current project is the critical edition of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana for Bärenreiter.
Curriculum Vitae
BS and MA, Hofstra University; MPhil and PhD, City University of New York; Certificate with honors in German, University of Vienna. Cello studies with David Wells, George Ricci.
- Provost’s Scholar
Affiliated Departments and Programs
Music History and Musicology