Prof. Castronuovo grew up in an Italian American family in northern New Jersey. He earned a bachelor’s degree in music history from Yale University, and a master’s degree in operatic studies from the School of Music of Indiana University. After working for several years in the field of concert and operatic production (New Jersey Symphony, Lyric Opera of Chicago), he returned to academic pursuits at Columbia University, where he received his doctoral degree in Italian Literature. In the early 90s, he taught Columbia’s Italian language summer course in Florence. He then moved to Middlebury College in Vermont, where he taught for a decade in the Italian department and directed student performance pieces. He worked next at Skidmore College in Saratoga NY for some six years. Prof. Castronuovo’s research interests run from literature to art to the lyric theater. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi. Fascinated by the fact that Leopardi morphed from a zealously religious child into an atheistic philosopher-poet, Castronuovo has analyzed the survival of purely linguistic structures of religious prayer in the secular poems of Leopardi’s maturity. In 2000, Prof. Castronuovo published a collaborative study that suggests textual and visual links between Leopardi’s most iconic poem, “L’infinito,” and Renaissance artist Lorenzo Lotto’s Transfiguration of Christ, painted for a church that Leopardi frequented as a child. Prof. Castronuovo has written and spoken often on operatic music and libretti. In 1999, he was a jury member at the “Pietro Mascagni International Competition for Young Opera Singers” in Cerignola (Puglia). He has a special interest in the collaborations between Arrigo Boito and Giuseppe Verdi, and in the cinematic uses of opera. He is a contributor to the “Opera Meets Film” section of the online journal Opera Wire.