Dr. 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...