Full Professor of Musicology at the Complutense University of Madrid, Álvaro Torrente, son of the Cervantes Prize Winner for Literature, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, has a degree in musicology from the Universidad de Salamanca (1993). He also holds a doctorate from the University of Cambridge, where he wrote a thesis entitled The Sacred Villancico in Early Eighteenth-Century Spain: the Repertory of Salamanca Cathedral (1997). He studies Hispanic Philology and Education at the Universidad de Salamanca and currently follows the official degree course in Piano and Music Theory at the conservatories of Salamanca and Madrid.

He has worked at the Royal Holloway - University of London (1997-1998) and the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Salamanca (1998-2000). He spent time as a visiting professor at New York University (1999) and Yale University (2009-2010), and was Spain's representative on the Directorium of the International Musicological Society (2007-2017). His prestigious international career has seen him regularly participating in congresses organised by the American Musicological Society, the International Musicological Society and the Biennial Conference of Baroque Music. He also lectures at numerous universities in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Austria, Germany, Portugal and Cuba.

His research primarily concentrates on vocal genres. Specialising in the study of Italian opera, he published La ópera en España e Hispanoamérica (ICCMU, 2002) with Emilio Casares; directed the complete edition of Francisco Cavalli's operas for Bärenreiter Verlag with Ellen Rosand and Lorenzo Bianconi, and has published several other articles on Italian opera. Furthermore, he collaborates closely with European theatres to recover operas such as "La Calisto" and "Ercole Amante" by Cavalli and "Orontea" by Cesti, which have been used in stage productions at the Bayerische Staatsoper (Munich), the Royal Opera House (London), the Nederlandse Oper (Amsterdam), the Theatre Basel (Basel), the Oper Frankfurt, as well as the Teatro Real in Madrid. He also researches music in Spanish Golden Age theatre, as well as the relationship between poetry and music, reconstructing the lost sound of Baroque dance songs such as the Jácaras, Zarabandas, Seguidillas and Chaconas, which have been performed in numerous countries and recorded on several CDs by Raquel Andueza and La Galanía.

As the Director of the Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales since 2014, he directs the magazine Cuadernos de Música Iberoamericana, the Música Hispana collection of texts and scores, as well as the Master’s Degree in Cultural Management at the Complutense Universidad of Madrid.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5830-183X