- MA and PhD, musicology, Princeton University
- BA, music, Swarthmore College
Micaela Baranello is a musicologist specializing in the staging and reception of opera and musical theater from the 19th century to the present day. Her current project, tentatively entitled Opera Reclaimed, examines how contemporary stagings of canonical operas intersect with questions of social justice and identity. Her work on this topic has already been published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society (“Staging Opera Ballet”) as well as The New York Times, where she has written as a critic and reporter covering the Bayreuth Festival, Aix-en-Provence, the Bavarian State Opera, and other major venues and events.
Her first book, The Operetta Empire: Music Theater in Early Twentieth-Century Vienna, published by the University of California Press, examines Vienna’s operetta industry in the final decades and aftermath of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including how works by composers like Franz Lehár and Emmerich Kálmán articulated both imperial and national identities. It was named an Outstanding Academic Title by CHOICE in 2022 and called “a deeply satisfying and fascinating book” by Opera Magazine. Her interests also include cultures of Weimar Republic Berlin, the work of Richard Strauss and the careers of emigré operetta composers in America. Her work has also been published in several edited volumes, Cambridge Opera Journal, the Financial Times and Opera Quarterly, for which she is currently reviews editor. She is also a member of the council of the American Musicological Society.
Baranello teaches classes on Western art music, opera, musical theater and related topics. At prior institutions she has advised undergraduate and graduate theses on topics such as Mahler and translation, Puccini’s America, staging revivals of Oklahoma!, and gender diversity in clarinet repertoire. She welcomes inquiries from prospective grad students.
She previously was assistant professor at the University of Arkansas. As president of Opera Fayetteville, Northwest Arkansas’s only professional opera company, she produced the Arkansas premieres of several operas, including Dark Sisters and Glory Denied. Baranello also taught at Smith College as McPherson-Eveillard Postdoctoral Fellow and at Swarthmore College as Visiting Assistant Professor. She holds a PhD and MA in musicology from Princeton University, where she was supported by a Mellon/ACLS fellowship and a Fulbright study grant (Austria); she also studied music as an undergraduate just outside Philadelphia at Swarthmore College.