Interview with Guillaume Castella, Winner of the Marta Walter Prize

This award will be presented to Guillaume Castella at the conclusion of the next Swiss Society for Musicology Symposium, on September 25, 2026, in Lucerne.

Guillaume Castella, you won the Marta Walter Prize for your doctoral dissertation at the University of Bern. Can you briefly describe your research?

My dissertation is part of a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and directed by Anselm Gerhard from 2020 to 2023, titled «Between Grandeur and Derision: The Evolution of Musical Dramaturgy in Unified Italy.» I focused on Italian opera buffa in northern Italy between 1861 and 1881, seeking to understand how this genre, which had been presumed dead since the premiere of *Don Pasquale* in 1843, had contributed to the cultural and identity-building of the newly unified Italy. We realized that the presence of opera buffa in the repertoires of second-tier theaters was not only significant in quantitative terms, but above all that the genre was the subject of lively critical discussion in both the Italian and international press. It was therefore necessary to understand the issues at stake in these debates and the dialogue between aesthetic, dramaturgical, and ideological reflections and the musical-dramatic substance of this repertoire.

Your dissertation is about to be published by Academic Press in Fribourg. Why is that important to you?

It was important to be able to publish it quickly as open access in the original language before considering an English translation for international distribution. In its current form, it is unlikely to reach English- or Italian-speaking researchers. Even though some of my colleagues are fluent in French, it must be acknowledged that the French-speaking musicology community is not the most concerned with this topic. Following this initial publication of the findings, we will explore broader dissemination that would help shed light on a gap in historiography.

What are your current and future career plans? What is your research focused on now?

I work as a research assistant at the Geneva University of Music. My current research seeks to combine historical approaches, dramaturgical analysis, and the study of critical reception with questions related to performance. My dissertation has already inspired others, as we were able to organize an international symposium at the HEM in Geneva, in collaboration with the University of Geneva, an international symposium on Antonio Ghislanzoni—a professional baritone in his younger years—to examine both his skills as a playwright and his perspective on the musical practices of his time. Furthermore, this research has opened up numerous avenues of inquiry, particularly regarding the actual practice of certain cultural ideals, such as the improvised lazzi of the commedia dell’arte or Rossinian singing; but also on more epistemological questions regarding the influence of certain critical clichés on how we approach a repertoire today.

Why did you submit your work for the Marta Walter Prize, and what does winning it mean to you?

The lure of money! More seriously, this work builds on a musicological tradition in Western Switzerland focused on 19th-century opera and Italian opera. Both Luca Zoppelli at the University of Fribourg and Anselm Gerhard at the University of Bern—my advisor for my master’s thesis and my doctoral dissertation, respectively—are leading authorities on French and Italian opera. It is thanks to the quality of their teaching, their guidance, and the approaches they developed that I was able to successfully complete this work. Now that they are professors emeritus, it is important to me to honor this legacy through the Marta Walter Prize.