Paolo Fabbri is an Italian musicologist and academic. In 1989 he was awarded the Dent Medal. He is best known for his extensive publications on the life and works of Gioachino Rossini, and for a biography of composer Claudio Monteverdi which was first published in the Italian language in Turin in 1985 but later published by Cambridge University Press using an English language translation by Tim Carter in 1994. He is also the author of Il secolo cantante: Per una storia del libretto d'opera nel Seicento (Bologna, 1990). For many years he has been a Professor of Music History and Musical Aesthetics at the University of Ferrara. He is the current director of the Fondazione Donizetti library in Bergamo.

Francesco Guccini (Italian: [franˈtʃesko ɡutˈtʃiːni] ( listen), born June 14, 1940) is an Italian singer-songwriter, considered one of the most important Cantautori. During the five decades of his music career he has recorded 16 studio albums and collections, and 6 live albums. He is also a writer, having published autobiographic and noir novels, and a comics artist. Guccini also worked as actor, soundtrack composer, lexicographer and dialectologist.

Guccini moved to Pàvana during World War II, then returned to Modena where he spent his teenage years and established his musical career. His debut album, Folk beat n. 1, was released in 1967, but the first success was in 1972 with the album Radici. He was harshly criticised after releasing Stanze di vita quotidiana, and answered to his critics with the song "L'avvelenata". His studio albums production slowed down in the nineties and 2000s, but his live albums continued being successful.

His lyrics have been praised for their poetic and literary value and have been used in schools as an example of modern poetry. Guccini has gained the appreciation of critics and fans, who regard him as an iconic figure. He has received several awards for his works; an asteroid, a cactus species and a butterfly subspecies have been named after him. The main instrument in most of his songs is the acoustic guitar.