CALOSSO, Eugenia

Eugenia Calosso was an Italian composer and conductor, born in Turin in 1878. She belonged to the generation of women musicians who entered public musical life not only as composers, but also as conductors, a field that was still exceptionally difficult for women at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Calosso began her conducting career at the Casino Municipale in San Remo and later appeared on concert tours across Europe, conducting in cities such as Basel, Berlin, Brussels, Cologne, London and Paris. Her activity as a conductor gave her a rare public profile among Italian women musicians of her time.
As a composer, Calosso wrote madrigals, orchestral suites, instrumental works for violin and piano, and more than fifty lieder. Her catalogue also included the opera Vespero, with a libretto by Ernesto Ragazzoni. Her vocal writing remained part of the rediscovery of women composers in recent years, with Foglie secche recorded in 2020 as part of a project dedicated to songs by women composers. Although her later life remains uncertain, Calosso’s surviving profile marks her as an important figure among early twentieth-century Italian women composers and conductors.