Composer, researcher and teacher Marco Stroppa was born in Verona and studied music in Italy (piano, choral music and conducting, composition and electronic music) before pursuing further studies at the MIT’s Media Laboratory in computer science, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence.) Between 1980 and 1984 he worked at the Centre for Computational Sonology at Padova University, where he wrote Traiettoria, a large work for piano and electronics, which immediately met with considerable success and continues to be performed regularly. In 1982 he was invited by Pierre Boulez to join IRCAM (Paris), and his uninterrupted association with the institute has been crucial for his musical growth. A highly respected pedagogue, Stroppa founded the composition course at the Bartók Festival in Hungary, where he taught for 13 years. Since 1999 he has taught composition at the Musik Hochschule, Stuttgart, and has also taught at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, Paris. His first opera Re Orso (King Bear), was premièred with great success in May 2012 at the Opéra Comique (Paris).