In the third year of doctoral research, supervised by Ben Walton. His project focuses on southern Italy, particularly Naples and its operatic life in the 1860s and 1870s. After Italian unification Naples changed overnight from a capital city to a large pre-industrial city, far from the new pan-Italian government and its centres of influences. It had had two trophy opera houses, several smaller theatres that presented comic opera and a court subsidy - after 1860 its operatic administrators needed to compete for money with Milan and for artists, including many of the composers, not just Verdi, who thought their careers would be better served in northern Italy instead. Naples presented a number of works by local composers. At the same time, several poets and composers set operas in Naples, partly because of the interest in the excavations at Pompeii: so Naples became associated with the exotic and heroic onstage.
The research project involves archival digging in Naples and examination of scores there by composers who have disappeared from the repertory.
Terry read Philosophy at King's for his first degree. After graduation he worked as an opera director at Welsh National Opera and on one-off productions in Madrid, Santa Fe and London. After a non-cultural career break he collaborated with Christopher Hogwood and Richard Egarr as chair of their orchestra, the Academy of Ancient Music. He is a director of two classical music recording companies, NMC Records which records new music and Opera Rara, which researches and records lost nineteenth and early twentieth-century works. He is joining the Philharmonia as a non-executive director in 2025.
