Barbara Russano Hanning is Professor Emeritus of Music at The City College of New York (CCNY) and the City University Graduate Center (CUNY) and has also taught in the DMA program of The Juilliard School. She wrote a book on the beginnings of opera and articles on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian secular music, music iconography, and eighteenth-century French subjects. She also authored a college textbook, Concise History of Western Music, currently in its fifth edition (2019). A past president of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, she currently serves on the Board of the NY-based early music ensemble ARTEK.