Meet Teresa Procaccini, Italy's first female Director of a Conservatory Teresa was born in Cerignola, Italy, on March 23rd, 1934. She began playing the piano at home at a very young age. During WWII her house was bombed and her piano destroyed but she never stopped playing. Achille Longo, Teresa's teacher and famous Italian composer of the time, encouraged her to study at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome because she was "much more musically skilled than his male students". She studied piano and organ and graduated in composition. In 1971 she became the first-ever Italian female Conservatory Director at the Umberto Giordano Conservatory in Foggia, Italy. She also taught composition at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome until 2001 and received many international prizes over the years for her compositions and contributions to classical music. She has composed over 200 works, ranging from chamber to symphony music, opera, and incidental music that is performed both in Italy and abroad. She even wrote music for the most famous Italian TV network, RAI. She was head of the "Associazione Amici della Musica di Foggia" until 2017 and is the founder of the annual event "Compositrici di ieri e di oggi" which showcases emerging female composers in Italy. © All rights reserved. #classicalmusic #composer