A passionate educator, Dr. Brown-Montesano is currently Chair of Music History at the Colburn School Conservatory of Music and a Lecturer in Musicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. She is also an active public scholar, regularly engaged by the Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, La Jolla Music Society, and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.
Her book, Understanding the Women of Mozart’s Operas (University of California Press, 2007; reprinted 2021) offers a fresh—and feminist— critical take on the female roles in the Da Ponte operas and The Magic Flute, re-evaluating original source materials and common reception tropes.
Dr. Brown-Montesano has also presented research on topics related to music and media such as music’s role in the original Sherlock Holmes stories and later adaptations, and the popular reception of J.S. Bach in postwar America from Glenn Gould to Hannibal Lecter. For more information, visit kristibrownmontesano.com.
