Maria "Virginia" Acuña

Maria Virginia Acuña is assistant teaching professor in the School of Music at the University of Victoria. Born in Toronto and raised in Argentina, Virginia began her musical studies at the Conservatorio Nacional Superior de Música in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she majored in voice performance. She then continued her studies in musicology at the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto before achieving a postdoctoral position at McGill University. Her research focuses on Spanish music and culture of the early modern era, specifically the intersection of gender, politics and race in baroque musical theatre. Other areas of research and teaching interest are opera, orientalism and exoticism in music and the intersection of music, literature and visual arts.

Her research appears in peer-reviewed journals including Eighteenth-Century Music, Early Music, and the Bulletin of the Comediantes. She is also co-author (with Susan Lewis) of Claudio Monteverdi: A Research and Information Guide (Routledge, 2018). She is currently working on a book chapter on literary traditions of lovesickness and lamenting on the Spanish musical stage, which will be included in Routledge’s Companion to Early Modern Music and Literature.