Dr Marco Ladd

Marco received his PhD in Music History from Yale University, having previously studied music at the University of Cambridge (BA and MPhil). Before joining KCL in October 2022, he held a Research Fellowship at Emmanuel College, Cambridge (2019–22).

Research interests and PhD supervision

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century music

• Modern Italian studies
• Screen music and audiovisual culture
• Histories of popular music

Marco’s research centres on music in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century, with a particular focus on the many intersections between “serious” and “popular” domains of music making at this time. He is currently completing his first book, which examines music in Italian silent cinema (c. 1900–1930) through the lens of synchronization, an important concept in film history and aesthetics. He is also working on a new project that concerns the wide reach of musica leggera (“light music”) in Italy in the 1920s, considering both the emergence, spread and influence of novel repertoires of jazz-influenced popular music on Italian culture; an article in preparation will examine the situation of Italian operetta after the advent of fascism. In addition, he has broad interests in music in screen media and in histories of audiovisual culture. 

Teaching

Cultural histories of music; music in film and other screen media; critical methodological issues in musicology.

Expertise and public engagement

Marco has written programme notes for Opera Rara and the Cleveland International Piano Festival, and educational materials for the Metropolitan Opera.

Selected publications

“Synchronization as Musical Labor in Italian Silent Cinema.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 75, no. 2 (Summer 2022): 273–317.

 

“Review Article: The importance of being serious.” Cambridge Opera Journal 34 (2022): 124–34.

“Film Music avant la lettre? Disentangling Film from Opera in Italy, c. 1913.” Opera Quarterly 34, no. 1 (Winter 2018): 29–64.