Gaia Varon

Gaia Varon is a musicologist with a strong commitment to public outreach, combining her work as a scholar and educator with that of an author and presenter on radio and television.

After studying music at the Conservatorio “Giuseppe Verdi” and the Civica Scuola di Musica in Milan, she graduated from the University of Bologna (Alma Mater Studiorum) with a thesis on orchestration and dramaturgy in Verdi. She later earned a PhD in Musicology and Musical Heritage at the same university, with a dissertation on technique, style, and ideology in audiovisual symphonic music: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. She further developed her research during a period at the University of Cambridge. The relationship between classical music and media lies at the core of her research activity.

She has published articles and book chapters on these topics, as well as on opera in audiovisual media, audiovisual recording techniques and style, classical music on Italian radio, and music in short films of the German avant-garde. Winner of the 2011 International Rotary Club “Giuseppe Verdi” Prize (Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, Parma), she is currently preparing a book on the instrumental dimension in Verdi’s operas. She is a member of the WAV (Worlds of Audiovision) research group led by Gianmario Borio and Elena Mosconi at the Department of Musicology of the University of Pavia–Cremona.

Since 2001, she has taught—or has taught as an adjunct lecturer—at several institutions, including the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan–Brescia, the IULM University in Milan, the Conservatorio “Giuseppe Verdi” in Milan, and the Conservatorio “Guido Cantelli” in Novara. She has also taught in master’s programs, including an online Master’s in Writing and Direction for Television and New Media in collaboration with the University of Turin, where she designed and coordinated the writing section.

Alongside her academic work, she is active professionally as a journalist, author, and radio and television presenter. She currently collaborates as an author and radio presenter with RSI Rete Due (Switzerland) and with Rai Radio 3, for which she is a correspondent from Teatro alla Scala in Milan and other Italian opera houses. For Radio3 she has hosted several programs, including Piazzaverdi for twelve years. She currently works as an author and presenter for Sky Classica. She has also created and hosted programs for RaiSat, Classica/Arte, and Telepiù Classica, including the series In Search of Beethoven, whose second episode received a special prize at the Prague Festival in 1997. As a journalist, she collaborates or has collaborated with newspapers and various specialized and general publications.