Autore di un recente volume sulla ricezione delle opere di Giuseppe Verdi nella Londra Vittoriana (Verdi in Victorian London. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2016), si è occupato a lungo della ricezione dell’opera italiana nel mondo anglosassone: “La prima recezione di Giuseppe Verdi a Londra: Henry Fothergill Chorley e l’Athenaeum” (Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, 2011; “Critica musicale e opera italiana a Londra: George Bernard Shaw”, (Musica e Storia, 2011); “Nothing but the Commonest Tunes: The Early Reception of Verdi’s Operas in London, 1845-1848” (Dissonanz, 2011); The Land of Song, La terra del Belcanto sulla stampa londinese nel decennio 1890 - 1900 (Peter Lang, 2008). A questi studi si affianca l’indagine sulla prassi vocale operistica italiana attraverso lo studio comparato di fonti discografiche e testuali: “’Ah! non credea mirarti’ nelle fonti discografiche di primo Novecento: Adelina Patti e Luisa Tetrazzini,” Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, 34/35 (2014/2015), pp.193-222; “Expressive Tempo Modifications in Adelina Patti’s Recordings,” Empirical Musicology Review Vol. 12, n. 1-2 (2017). Si è anche occupato di questioni legate alla didattica e alla formazione musicale in ambito accademico (MacRitchie, J., Zicari, M., & Blom, D. (2018). Identifying challenges and opportunities for student composer and performer peer learning through newly-composed classical piano scores. British Journal of Music Education, 1-23). Dal 2005 insegna Storia della Musica presso la Scuola universitaria di Musica del Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana (Lugano).
2021/2022 - Eventi culturali e artistici: nuove modalità di produzione, fruizione e partecipazione https://programma-eventi.supsi.ch/cms/
2021 – Caruso e il suo tempo (1./2). www.rsi.ch/caruso-e-il-suo-tempo
2021 – Caruso e il suo tempo (2./2). www.rsi.ch/caruso-e-il-suo-tempo
2018-2020 – Early 20th Century’s recordings: reconstructing Italian bel canto. https://early-recordings.com/programme/
2015/2018 – Expressive tempo modification in early 20th Century’s recordings of vocal performances
2012/2014 – Giuseppe Verdi in the London Press. A study on Opera reception
2011 – “Shape the Sound: Trumpet mouthpiece manufacturing and tone quality”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation
2008 - Articulations and Mouthpiece morphology in Brass Instruments: Trumpet and Horn. Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation
2004 – “The reception of Italian operatic theatre in London at the end of 19th century”. Research project on the history of opera reception, criticism and management in London over the last decade of the 19th century
June 2003 - December 2004: “Il verismo e le strategie di mercato nella cultura europea a cavallo tra ‘800 e ‘900” (Verismo and the market oriented strategies in European Culture at the turn of the 19th century). The research, conducted in collaboration with Hubert Eiholzer, aimed at exploring the possible origins of the so-called mass art in veristic operatic theatre by means of Noël Carroll’s theory of mass art (1998)
January - December 2003: Cantata per la traslazione del sangue di San Gennaro by Paisiello, 1793. The project led to the first modern performance of this forgotten manuscript, recovered in the library of the Naples Conservatoire, and to the edition of the score, published for Ut-Orpheus, Bologna (Italy), 2005
2002 -“Dizionario dei Musicisti della Svizzera Italiana”, a project, in collaboration with the Associazione Ricerche Musicali nella Svizzera Italiana, to produce an on-line dictionary with biographies of the most important musicians in the Italian speaking region of Switzerland of the past www.ricercamusica.ch
2001 - “Mastery through Imitation” research project in collaboration with Dr. Hubert Eiholzer, and Dr. Aaron Williamon and Dr. Tânia Lisboa, Royal College of Music, London; the project was funded by the Swiss National Fund. The results have been presented at the ESCOM Conference on Musical Creativity - Liège - 5-8 April 2002 and the 7th ICMPC - the world conference on music psychology and related disciplines - at the The University of New South Wales, Sydney, 17-21 July 2002, and published on Musicae Scientiae, Journal of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music ESCOM (2005)
2001 - “Bakom” research project, in collaboration with Dr. Ruth Hungerbühler, Communication Science Faculty at Università della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano), and Hubert Eiholzer, Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana; the research explored the tendencies of the broadcasting policy at the three culture channels of Swiss Radio (Rete Due, DRS 2, Espace 2)
Zicari, M., Bernardi, C., & Cruder, C. (2021). EVENTI : un’ indagine sulla resilienza delle istituzioni musicali della Svizzera italiana in tempi di pandemia. Schweizer Jahrbuch Für Musikwissenschaft- Annales Suisses de Musicologie- Annuario Svizzero Di Musicologia, 38, 97–102. https://doi.org/10.36950/sjm.38.13
Massimo Zicari, The Voice of the Century: The Culture of Italian Bel Canto in Luisa Tetrazzini’s Recorded Interpretations (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2022)
https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/1530
Massimo Zicari (a cura di), Didattica musicale e ricerca - 2021, (Quaderni del Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana), Lucca, LIM, 2022
https://www.lim.it/it/extra-sconto/6297-didattica-musicale-e-ricerca-2021-9788855431354.html#/2-tipo_prodotto-libro
Zicari, Massimo, ‘Cultural Stereotypes and the Reception of Verdi ’ s Operas in Victorian London Operas in Victorian London’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 00 (2021), 1–14 https://doi.org/10.1080/1354571X.2020.1855803
Massimo Zicari
Responsabile delegato Divisione Ricerca e Sviluppo
