Carolyn Abbate Named University Professor at Harvard

Carolyn Abbate, one of the world’s most respected music historians, has been appointed the Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor at Harvard University. The appointment is effective on January 1.

The designation as a University Professor is the highest faculty honor at Harvard. At the current time, 24 faculty members serve as University Professors. Among those holding this rank include well-known names such as Lawrence Summer, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Helen Vendler, Lawrence Tribe, and William Julius Wilson. Professor Abbate will be the fourth woman among Harvard’s 24 University Professors.

Professor Abbate’s research focuses primarily on the history of opera. She is the author of Unsung Voices (Princeton University Press, 1991) and In Search of Opera (Princeton University Press, 2003). Her latest book, for which she is co-author, is A History of Opera: The Last Four Hundred Years (Allen Lane, 2012).

Dr. Abbate is a graduate of Yale University and holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University. She taught at Princeton from 1991 to 2005. She then served for three years as the Fanny Peabody Professor of Music at Harvard. From 2008 to earlier this year she was the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.