Philip Gossett, a retired music scholar and professor of music at the University of Chicago who was considered one of the world’s foremost experts on 19th-century Italian opera, died Monday at his home in the Hyde Park neighborhood. He was 75.

The cause of death was progressive supernuclear palsy, a rare degenerative disease, according to his son, Jeffrey.

Gossett was widely respected as an authority on the operas of Gioachino Rossini and Giuseppe Verdi, having served as general editor of the collected Rossini works and coordinating editor of the collected Verdi works. The latter edition was published by the University of Chicago Press and Casa Ricordi, Milan.

The critical edition of Rossini operas he supervised or prepared himself was based on painstaking study of manuscript sources and librettos, with close attention to authentic musical and textual elements. The edition has done much to spur the contemporary revival of interest in, and performances of, Rossini’s long-neglected stage works.

No ivory tower scholar, Gossett collaborated with such singers as Marilyn Horne and Cecilia Bartoli on productions of early 19th-century Italian operas, including Rossini’s.

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