Announcing the Recipient of the 2025 Sorbello Fellowship Grant
The Sorbello Foundation is pleased to announce that Dr. Emanuele Nidi has been awarded the 2025 Sorbello Fellowship Grant. Dr. Nidi is Adjunct Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Naples “Federico II.”
Dr. Nidi’s funded research project, titled “Atlantic Aidas”: African American Opera Singers in Fascist Italy, investigates the conditions that enabled African American opera singers to perform in Italy during the 1920s and 1930s. The project examines how these artists were received in both mass journalism and the specialist press, with particular attention to the ways racial categories were constructed and applied—often shifting in response to changing historical and political contexts. More broadly, the research explores the relationship between race, nationality, and opera within a transatlantic framework.
As Dr. Nidi explains: “This project will analyze the journeys of Caterina Jarboro, Lillian Evanti, and Florence Cole Talbert in Italy in order to reflect in detail on the relationship between racial identity and ‘cultivated’ music on both sides of the Atlantic.”
The Sorbello Foundation congratulates Dr. Nidi on this achievement and looks forward to the innovative contributions his research will bring to the fields of Italian, American, and transatlantic studies.
The Sorbello Fellowship Grant is promoted by the Romeyne Robert and Uguccione Ranieri Foundation (USA) and the Fondazione Ranieri di Sorbello (Perugia, Italy). It is co-sponsored by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (CUNY) and offered in partnership with the University for Foreigners of Perugia and the Center for Italian Studies, Stony Brook University (SUNY).
