She received her B.A. from Bates College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in music history from the University of Chicago. Her primary research interests are in the areas of Italian opera, performance practice, diva culture, and the aesthetics of nineteenth-century musical culture. She is the author of Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance (Oxford University Press, 2009) and the co-editor of Fashions and Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Her articles and reviews have been published in 19th-Century Music, Cambridge Opera Journal, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, Verdi Forum, Journal of British Studies, and other musicological books and journals.