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Adam wrote 39 operas, mainly in the comic vein, but is probably best known for his score to the ballet Giselle (1841). 6.
Hailed as a musical polymath to equal only Benjamin Britten, Adès became the artistic director of Britten's own Aldeburgh Festival, 1999–2008. But his style, in many genres, is emphatically his own. His two large operas, The Tempest and The Exterminating Angel, have both received major productions at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. 1.
As a young man, Aeschylus fought in the battles of Marathon and Salamis, references to which inform his play The Persians, one of the very few Greek dramas to deal with contemporary events. He is the earliest of the celebrated tragedians (with Sophocles and Euripides), and his Oresteia is the only surviving set of Greek plays written to be performed together as a trilogy. 3.
Like most choreographers, Sir Frederick Ashton began as a dancer, and continued performing even as his fame blossomed as a choreographer. He became artistic director of the Royal Ballet in 1963, but had worked with the company and its various predecessors since 1935, responsible for creating many of the works that are the foundations of English ballet today. 6.
After work with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, including the pioneering neo-classical Apollon musagète (1928, with Stravinsky) and The Prodigal Son (1929, with Prokofiev), he moved to America, where he eventually co-founded the New York City Ballet, remaining its artistic director for 35 years. One of the most influential choreographers of the century, he is especially noted for his abstract works with minimal decor but the greatest musicality. 6.
Balfe was born in Dublin and studied voice and violin. His singing career took him to Paris, Milan, and London, where he also began to get his own operas produced. The Bohemian Girl (1843), his greatest success (containing the air "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls") was produced in translation all over Europe, and even returned to London as an Italian opera! 8.
After following a practice of strict serialism for some years, Berio began to depart from it by including elements of chance and collage, incorporating fragments of other works as in his Sinfonia (1969), arguably his masterpiece. His Folk Songs of 1975 was one of several works written for his wife, the American soprano Cathy Berberian. 12.
Berlin (b. Israel Beilin) arrived in the US from Russia at the age of 5. Although he could not read music and could barely play, he wrote over 1,500 songs with the aim, in his words, "to reach the heart of the average American." With hits like "Easter Parade," "White Christmas," "God Bless America," and the musical Annie Get Your Gun (1946), one might say he succeeded. 9.
The leading French composer of the Romantic era, Berlioz was a master of orchestration and dramatic effect. A fervent admirer of Shakespeare (and a Shakespearean actress, Harriet Smithson), his works often have a strong literary quality that can obscure their musical craftsmanship. He was unable to get a full performance of his operatic masterpice, The Trojans (1863), but it has come into its own in recent years. 11.
Winning fame relatively young as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein also reached wide audiences with his music lectures on television. His work as a composer ranges from Broadway musicals such as West Side Story (1957) through symphonies, operas, and his multi-media Mass (1971). 9.
Sir David Bintley began his career as a dancer with the Sadlers Wells Ballet. This later became the Birmingham Royal Ballet, the company which he headed from 1995 to 2018, and for which he created over two dozen new works. 1.
Starting his career as a cellist, Boccherini was also a prolific composer, mostly of chamber music. He lived in Spain from 1769 to 1787, prospering under royal patronage. His last years, however, were less successful, and he died in poverty. 12.
While still a young child, Lili attended the lessons of her elder sister Nadia at the Paris Conservatoire, and soon came to the attention of Gabriel Fauré and other leading musicians in her own right. Although plagued by illness, she became the first female winner of the coveted Prix de Rome, and had a commission to write an opera to a text by Maeterlinck, but died at 24 with tragically little of her potential realized. 12.
The son of an immigrant French dancer, Bournonville trained partly in Paris and partly in Copenhagen, where he spent the whole of his subsequent career. Not only was the the choreographer of over 50 works, including La sylphide (1836) and Napoli (1842), he institiuted a rigorous system of training which preserved their style intact to the present day—a legacy unmatched by any other ballet tradition. 6.
Bowler's press release quotes a description of her as a "triple-threat composer-performer-provocatrice," a fair account of her boundary-busting performances in her own multi-media works with social or political themes. She recently completed an opera about sexual assault for the Royal Opera House. 12.
Brecht's importance to musical theater rests mainly on his collaborations with Kurt Weill between 1928 and 1932: The Threepenny Opera, Happy End, Mahagonny, and The Seven Deadly Sins. A Communist, he fled the Nazi régime, but returned after the War to found the celebrated Berliner Ensemble in East Berlin. 9, 10.
Largely self-taught as a composer, Brian was a great admirer of the late-Romantics Mahler and Strauss, and emulated their scale and style in a series of 32 symphonies, mostly written after he had turned 70. The first of these, his Gothic Symphony (1932), calls for the largest forces of any orchestral-choral work of all time. 11.
Arguably the leading opera composer of the mid-20th century, Britten's major operas have included Peter Grimes (1945), Billy Budd (1951), Gloriana (1953), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960), and Death in Venice (1973), plus many stage works for smaller forces. He was equally active as a composer of instrumental music and text settings, and latterly as a conductor and accompanist. 2, 4.
Born and trained in Rome, Caccini was brought to Florence by Francesco de' Medici, as singer, choirmaster, and composer. He was one of the members of the Camerata gathered around Count Bardi, and as such was influential in the creation of opera and development of the new seconda prattica style. 4.
Largely self-taught as a composer, he worked in the civil service until 1880. He wrote several operas, including L'étoile in 1877, but is best remembered for his orchestral pieces España (1883) and Marche joyeuse (1888). 12.
Cocteau's influence on the arts in France in the earlier 20th century was pervasive, extending to most media. In terms only of classical myth, he wrote the text to Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex in 1927 and directed a trio of films based on the Orpheus legend in 1930, 1950, and 1960. 3.
Trained in Paris, Copland began writing in the style of the European avant garde, but in his ballet commissions in the 1930s and 1940s, such as Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring, he developed the open folk-inflected style that has become, for many people, the sound of American music. 10.
The son of an Italian actor in Paris, Coralli trained as a dancer and enjoyed an early career in Vienna, Venice, and Milan, as a performer and choreographer. The pinnacle of his career came on his return to the Paris Opera, where he created the quintessential Romantic ballet Giselle in 1841, working with Jules Perrot on the choreography and Adolphe Adam on the music, both younger men than himself. 6.
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The author of the iconic melodrama Under the Gaslight (1867), Daly was also an impresario and stage director, exercising a strict control over his companies, running both in New York and London. 8.
Davenant claimed to be Shakespeare's natural son, but it is less unlikely that he was his godson. He was appointed Poet Laureate by Charles I, spent much of the Interregnum in exile or prison, then returned to favor in the Restoration as impresario of one of the two Royal Theatres. His adaptation of The Tempest with John Dryden (his successor as Poet Laureate) set the fashion for presentation of Shakespeare for two centuries. Though produced privately, his Siege of Rhodes (1656) is the first English opera. 1.
Originally a singer and conductor, D'Oyly Carte found great success later by commissioning the 14 "Savoy Operas" from Gilbert and Sullivan, building a theatre to perform them in (plus an hotel), and controlling their subsequent distribution through stringent copyright. His posthumous grip on their performance did not end until 1961. His foundation of the Royal English Opera was markedly less successful. 8.
Poet laureate of the United Kingdom 1668–88, Dryden dominated the Restoration theater and literary scene. He was the most important contributor (though posthumous) to the translation of the Metamorphoses issued by Samuel Garth in 1717. He collaborated with Davenant on an adaptation of The Tempest that returned Shakespeare to the Restoration stage in modified but triumphant guise. 1.
Although he worked in many media, Dulac's imagination, use of color, and study of Asian art made him especially popular as a book-illustrator of legendary and fantastic subjects, including Shakespeare's Tempest, perhaps his most famous work. 1.
After five years as a professional dancer in Sweden and Holland, Ekman began a free-lance career as a choreographer when he was 21. His works, which move beyond traditional ballet technique in startling and inventive ways, have been created for or taken up by companies all over Europe. 12.
One of the leading modernist poets of the 20th century, known for works such as The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1936–42), Eliot also found success in the theatre with works such as Murder in the Cathedral (1935). His light verse collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) was the source for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats. 11.
Englishby is an award-winning composer for film, television, and the theatre, including several years as an associate artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company. 1.
"Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripides is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full [18]. He is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances." [Wikipedia] 3.
His outsanding ability as an improviser on the organ attracted much attention, but his other works met with little interest until a concert organized by his pupils spurred him to new invention in the last few years of his life. 6.
A student of Anton Dvorak in his native Czechoslovakia, Friml came to the US in 1906, after several earlier visits, finding success as a répetiteur at the Metropolitan Opera and performing pianist. But he became best known as the composer of operettas, the best known being Rose Marie (1924) and The Vagabond King (1925), both of which were soon made into films. 9.
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Although he wrote the libretto for Handel's early opera Acis and Galatea (1718), Gay is best known as the author of The Beggar's Opera (1728), satirizing the very kind of opera that Handel made famous. The songs in this piece about highwaymen and whores are sung to popular tunes arranged by the German-English composer Johann Pepusch. 5.
Born Jacob Gershwine in New York to Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe, he studied piano and composition, but soon found his vocation as a songwriter, mostly with his elder brother Ira (born 1896). Most of his songs have become crossover standards, as have his orchestral works Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928). Most of his stage works are primarily containers for his songs, but his 1935 opera Porgy and Bess is an exception, a closely-developed study of African-American life. 9.
The author of many straight plays as well, Gilbert gained lasting fame as the librettist and theatrical genius behind the 14 operettas ("Savoy Operas") written with Arthur Sullivan between 1871 and 1896. These became almost as popular in America as the were in Britain. 8.
Giraud (born Emile Albert Kayenbergh) was a Symbolist poet whose principal claim to lasting fame is his Pierrot Lunaire (1884), set to music by Arnold Schoenberg in 1912. 10.
Graham technique is at the root of much modern dance, even today. In her 70-year career, she collaborated with major composers and designers to create over 180 works, ranging from the iconic Americanism of Appalachian Spring (1944) to treatments of mythological subjects, such as the Medea story in Cave of the Heart (1948). 10.
Oscar Hammerstein's father, a German immigrant, was manager of the Metropolitan Opera and active also on Broadway. His son quickly established a career as lyricist, working with Rudolf Friml, Sigmund Romberg, Jerome Kern (Show Boat, 1926), and a very long partnership with Richard Rodgers from Oklahoma! (1943) to The Sound of Music (1959). 9.
Gradually over the last half-century, Handel's 42 operas and numerous dramatic oratorios have been recognized as placing him on the level of Mozart and Verdi as an opera composer. The delay in appreciation is partly due to the fact that his preferred form, opera seria, is based almost entirely on recitative and solo arias. Born in Germany and trained in Italy, he dominated the English musical scene in the first half of the 18th century. 5, 12.
Sir Augustus Harris was an actor and playwright, but made his greatest contribution as an impresario, primarily at the Drury Lane theatre in the 1880s and 90s. He nurtured some of the greatest performers of the age in variety and pantomime, and used the profits to fund a successful opera company that presented the British premieres of operas by Wagner and others. 8.
With Mozart, Haydn was the leading musical genius of the late 18th century. Equally prolific, but far longer lived, he wrote 104 symphonies, 68 string quartets, 16 operas, and 14 masses, together with the two great oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons. 12.
Self-described as "a Dutch-Peruvian stage director and theatre maker whose practice is characterized by her search for collaborative process and space for sound [who] looks to create work in which there is always a moment for joy, a presence of magic and room for chaos" she sprung to the fore with her collage piece Faust [working title] for the Dutch National Opera in 2020, which as in turn led to other commissions from companies in Europe and America. 12.
Born in the Channel Islands (though his mother told him Dublin), he went with her to Stuttgart, where he received training in cello and composition, leading to a career as an orchestral player and soloist, often in his own compositions. He came to the US in 1886 as principal cellist at the Met, and became conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony in 194. His career trajectory changed completely in 1903, however, with the success of Babes in Toyland, the first of his many operettas. 9.
Born of a musical family in Alsace, Hérold spent most of his career on the music staff of one or other of the Paris opera houses. At the same time, he was a prolific composer, although few of his works have remained in the repertoire except for his opera Le pré aux clercs, the overture to his opera Zampa, and his 1828 score for the already-existing ballet La fille mal gardée. 6.
Abbess of the monastery of Rupertsberg on the Rhine, and composer of the music drama Ordo Virtutum, she achieved extraordinary fame as a theologian, poet, composer, manuscript illuminator, and natural scientist, becoming known as "The Sibyl of the Rhine." The Catholic Church has long revered her as a saint. 3.
Hilliard is best known for his numerous portrait miniatures, capturing the personalities and styles of the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts, including portraits of the Queen herself over a 30-year span. 4.
Hoiby studied with Gian Carlo Menotti at the Curtis Institute, and took up a similar career in opera, writing music whose accessible lyricism bucked the prevailaing trend. His most famous work is probably his 1971 adaptation of Tennessee Williams's Summer and Smoke, with libretto by Lanford Wilson. He also worked with his life partner Mark Schulgasser on an adaptation of The Tempest which achieved some success in 1986. 1.
The son of a painter, Holbein was born in Augsburg but soon moved to Basel. He spent much of career in London, where he was court painter to Henry VIII; many of the leading figures of the time we now picture through his eyes. He favored a highly realistic style, full of details that fill out the life and circumstances of his sitters. 4.
Barbora Horáková Joly studied voice in Switzerland and was set on a career as an opera singer before switching to stage direction. Her 2021 staging of Haydn's Missa in Tempore Belli in Amsterdam has led to other invitations (with more standard repertoire) from companies in Germany, Holland, and Geat Britain. 12.
A dancer and later balletmaster of the Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg, Ivanov collaborated with Marius Petipa on Swan Lake, taking responsibility for Acts II and IV and, later, for most if not all of The Nutcracker. 6.
Janácek turned to opera fairly late in his career, but his half-dozen mature works in the medium place him in the forefront of opera composers of the 20th century, not only for their distinctive musical style but also their unusual structure and dramatic innovation. Among them are: Jenufa (1903), Káta Kabanová (1921), The Cunning Little Vixen (1923), The Makropoulos Affair (1925), and From the House of the Dead (1928). 10.
Most of Janequin's large output consisted of secular chansons, often with striking onomatopoeic imitation of their subjects, which made him exceptionally popular in his day. 3.
After training at the Slade School in London, Jarman began his career as a stage designer, including major projects in opera and ballet. His stage collaborations with Ken Russell led to his work in film, which included numerous experimental works, music videos, and a beautiful rendering of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. A lifelong gay activist, he died of AIDS in 1994. 1.
Sir Elton John (birth name Reginald Dwight) achieved fame as a singer-songwriter in the 1970s, working primarily with the lyricist Bernie Taupin. In his later career, he found new success as composer of such shows as The Lion King (1994) and Billy Elliot (2005). He is an outspoken advocte for AIDS prevention and gay rights. 2.
A lutenist and composer of the late Tudor and early Jacobean eras, Johnson wrote music for many masques and several of Shakpespeare's later plays. [The image, though in period, is not Johnson's portrait.] 1.
In buildings such as the Queen's House in Greenwich and the Banqueting House, Whitehall, Jones showed himself the first English master of classical architecture based on the precepts of Vitruvius and the example of Palladio. 4.
In contrast to his older contemporary Shakespeare, Jonson developed the "Comedy of Humours" in plays like Volpone and The Alchemist, based on recurrent personality types. In the Stuart era, he developed a new specialty, writing masques which were immensely extravagant but very popular with the court. 4.
Manoj (using the pronoun "they") bill themselves as a "Queer conductor, composer, and theatre maker." These three roles were in evidence in their 2020 collaboration on FAUST [working title] at the Dutch National Opera, but Kamps have also conducted many classical operas and several premieres. 12.
After training in his native Sweden, Karlsson moved to New York City, where he continues to work, writing music for video games, films, and several ballets by his friend Alexander Ekman. 12.
Although he studied charcoal drawing as a child, Kentridge originally hoped to become an actor, and studied at the Théâtre Jacques Lecocq in Paris. Realizing his limitations as a performer, he stuck to art as a career, producing a series of works on paper and film, often with themes of social justice. In later years, his two interests have combined in a series of opera productions combining live action and film, such as his Wozzeck and Lulu for the NY Met. 2.
The son of German and Bohemian immigrants in New York, Kern became one of the most famous songwriters of his age. He also wrote several Broadway musicals, of which the most famous is Show Boat (1926), which occupied new territory by making the music support a story dealing with real issues, as opposed to being a fantasy concocted simply to contain the music. 9.
Kirby holds a doctorate in composition from Trinity College, Dublin, after studying software development and music technology elsewhere. According to her website, " Her output includes contemporary instrumental composition, electroacoustic music and experimental-pop, often exploring humour and theatre." 12.
Kirsten trained as a voice and piano major, only beginning formal study in composition at age 30, latterly at the Peabody Conservatory. She specializes in music that has a narrative, theatrical, or vocal component, even though performed by instrumental groups. 12.
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Born in Los Angeles, but now living and working in New York, Lang was a co-founder of the musical collective Bang on a Can. In 1908, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Little Match Girl Passion, a retelling of the Andersen story using the structure of a Bach Passion. 12.
Lanier, who came from a French family, was unusual among British composers of his time in maintaining continental connections. In addition to composing music for Charles I (and doing occasional stage design), he traveled as his art agent; he was responsible, for example, in persuading Van Dyck to come to London. He also knew the music of Monteverdi at first hand, which influenced his own style. 4.
Son of a choirmaster at Salisbury Cathedral, William Lawes was brought to London (with his brother Henry) by Prince Charles, and appointed a court composer when Charles became king. He wrote masques, a variety of part-songs and sacred music, and the suites for viol consort that are his greatest legacy. A Royalist in the Civil War, he lost his life in battle. 4.
Known professionally as LEBO M, Morake was brought to Hollywood in 2018 to write the African songs in The Lion King, and continued to work on its various spinoffs and other Disney movies. He has also maintained a performing career as a singer. 11.
The son of an Austrian army bandmaster, and at first speaking only Hungarian, Lehár studied violin at conservatory, but was self-taught as a composer. Beginning in 1896, he became known for his operettas, of which the most famous is The Merry Widow (1905), a worldwide hit. Later in his career he formed a close professional association with tenor Richard Tauber. 9.
Sometimes referred to as "the English Mozart," his contemporary Linley also showed prodigious talent as a composer and performer (on the violin), but died even younger, of a boating accident at age 24. 1.
Baron Lloyd-Webber is credited with reinvigorating the stage musical with a series of hits that include Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), Evita (1976), Cats (1981), and The Phantom of the Opera (1986). He has also written a certain amount of non-theatrical music, including an anthem for the coronation of King Charles III. 11.
Though he worked in several genres and was a noted theorist, Locke wrote theatre music for plays by Davenant including his opera The Siege of Rhodes and his adaptation of The Tempest. 1.
He is represented in the Squarcialupi Codex, one of the principal sources for Italian music in the 14th century, by 16 pieces, but little is known about his life. 3.
Born in Norway, Herman Severin Løvenskiold was a teenager when his family moved to Denmark. After training in composition, he wrote scores for several productions at the National Theatre and, most notably, for August Bournonville's version of La Sylphide. 6.
Lully became master of music to Louis XIV, writing music in all genres, but most especially operas and ballets. His operas include Alceste (1675), Atys (1676), Persée (1682), and Armide (1686). For most of his career, no new music could be performed in France without his approval. 4.
A violinist, Mackenzie trained in Germany and began his career in orchestras there. He later enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music in London—he would eventually become its Principal—and began composing while continuing to play the violin as a living. Many of his works have a Scottish theme, including three Scottish Rhapsodies (1880, 1881, and 1911) for orchestra. 8.
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was Master of the Queen's Music (composer laureate) for the last decade of his life, celebrating his by-then establishment status. But he began as a radical, writing works such as Eight Songs for a Mad King that stretched the boundaries of performance practice. Like Britten, he has always liked working for specific performers and places, including many works for his adopted home of Orkney to the North of Scotland. 10.
McPhee "is best known for being the first Western composer to make a musicological study of Bali, and to develop American gamelan along with fellow composer Lou Harrison. He wrote original music influenced by that of Bali and Java, decades before such compositions that were based on world music became widespread." [Wikipedia]. He studied composition at the Peabody Conservatory. 2.
Although born and trained in Germany, Meyerbeer began his prolific opera career in Italy, falling under the spell of the serious operas of Rossini. He moved to Paris in 1826 and began a series of operas that essentially defined the notion of Grand Opera, among them Robert le Diable (1831), Les Huguenots (1836), Le Prophète (1849), and L'Africaine (1865). 6, 7.
A member of Les Six (with Satie, Poulenc, and others), Milhaud was a prolific composer in all media, noted for his early use of jazz and his experiments in polytonality and unusual instrumental combinations. 10.
Molière might be set beside Racine as the comic and tragic masks respectively of French classical theatre. A working actor himself (he died acting in one of his own plays), he had a practical sense of what worked with an audience, including devices taken from popular comedy. But his willingness (like Shakespeare's) to occasionally write farce should not detract from his control of the French language, which was as great as Racine's. 4.
The towering genius of the first half of the 17th century, and a founding father of opera. Unfortunately, only three of his dozen operas survive: La favola di Orfeo (The Story of Orpheus), written for Mantua in 1607 and the earliest opera to remain in the general repertoire, and The Return of Ulysses and The Coronation of Poppea, both written for Venice at the end of his life. 4, 5.
Organist of St. Paul's Cathedral, and the leading madrigal composer of the Elizabethan era, Morley was a friend of Shakespeare's and set songs from several of his plays, although it is not known if these were used in performance. [This is the title page of one of his publications; no portrait of him could be found.] 4.
Born in Montreal, Moussa then moved to Munich to study conducting. He became music director of the INDEX Ensemble in Munich in 2010, and remains based in that city, although his conducting career and performance of his compositions have given him international exposure. 3.
A child prodigy as both performer and composer, Mozart produced an extraordinary body of work in all genres over a relatively short life. He wrote the greatest of his many operas after moving to Vienna: three collaborations with Lorenzo da Ponte—The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790)—framed by two German Singspiels: The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782) and The Magic Flute (1791). 11.
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The son of a cantor, Offenbach took the name of the German town in which he was born. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire, he began to write operettas, composing over 90 in the course of a long and wildly successful career. He is also known for his unfinished grand opera The Tales of Hoffmann. 9.
Beginning his career as a dancer himself, he has achieved lasting success as a choreographer, notably with the national ballet companies of the Netherlands, Lithuania, and his native Poland. 1.
Although he died at the age of 26, Pergolesi had already written several operas, including the comedy La serva padrona, and a variety of religious music, most notably his Stabat Mater. His work is noted for its melodic grace and sweetness. More music is attributed to him than he could possibly have written! 5.
Peri was a leading member of the Florentine Camerata in the late 16th century. His Dafne (1597, now lost) is regarded as the first opera. The picture shows him in the role of Arion. 4.
The Lyon-born Perrot began his career as the dancing partner of Marie Taglioni. When she broke the partnership, fearing he might outshine her, he turned his attentions to Carlotta Grisi, and (with the older Jean Coralli) created the 1841 ballet Giselle around her. He went on to create Pas de Quatre in 1845, bringing Taglioni, Grisi, and two other ballerinas together. He ended his career as ballet master in Saint Petersburg. 6.
After a career as a dancer in France and Spain, Petipa accepted a position with the Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg, and remained in Russia the rest of his life. His work as the choreographer of The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and the 1895 revival of Swan Lake made him one of the most influential choreographers of all time. 6.
Plomer, who was raised in South Africa, spent three years in Japan between the wars. Moving to England in 1939, he became friends with EM Forster, Virginia Woolf, and other members of the Bloomsbury Group, and with Bnjamin Britten, for whom he wrote the libretto of Gloriana (1953) and his three Noh-based church operas beginning with Curlew River (1964). He was also a poet and a literary editor for Faber and Faber. 2.
Puccini took up the mantle of Verdi as the dominant opera composer of the late 19th century, and developed an international popularity that is unrivaled to this day. His principal works include: Manon Lescaut (1893), La bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), and the unfinished Turandot (1926). 2, 11.
A specialist in ballet, Pugni composed nearly all the ballets by Jules Perrot (including Pad de quatre but not including the earlier Giselle), and followed him to Saint Petersburg in 1850, remained there after Perrot's departure, composing ballet scores for his successors. 6.
Ramuz was born in Lausanne and remained near there for most of his life, except for some study in Germany and a decade in Paris before WW1. He is best known as the author of The Soldier's Tale, set to music by Stravinsky in 1918. 10.
Though often grouped with Debussy as a musical Impressionist, Ravel was very much his own man. As a composer with a strong sense of tradition, he often wrote in older dance forms. As a virtuoso pianist, he wrote piano music of transcendent difficulty that extended the range of piano techniques. And as a master orchestrator, he enriched 20th-century music with some of its most vibrant colors. 2.
Influenced by jazz and classical Indian music, Riley was a pioneer of American Minimalism in the 1960s, and his 1964 work In C is cited as the seminal piece to bring the style to public awareness. He has continued to perform and compose, working with the repetition of short motifs, aleatoric tchniques, and the combination of live and taped sound. 2.
Beginning his career as a dancer and later choreographer with the American Ballet Theatre, Robbins later joined forces with Balanchine in the New York City Ballet. While he created numerous ballets in the classical tradition, his career on Broadway and in film is at least as important, including his work on West Side Story in both media. 9.
Born Siegmund Rosenberg in Hungary, he showed precocious talent as a musician. He came to America in his late teens, and soon began working for a music publisher, adapting European musicals for US performance. His own most successful shows, The Student Prince (1924) and The Desert Song (1926), were in a similar style, but he could also write music that was entirely American in spirit. 9.
One of the giants of baroque art, Rubens developed the style of Titian into a powerful rhetoric applied equally to sacred and profane subjects, and exerted enormous influence in Spain, England, and France as well as in his native Flanders, continued in the work of his many pupils. His position at so many courts also made him invaluable as a diplomat. 4.
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Schoenberg is most famous in the history of music as the developer first of atonal music and then of the principle of musical organization known as Serialism. He wrote three shorter operas, but his masterpiece is Moses und Aron. Although he conceived it in three acts, Schoenberg had only finished two when he emigrated to America in 1934, and it is this version that is usually performed. [Schoenberg was also a painter; this is a self-portrait.] 10.
A poet and prolific playwright, he superseded his enemy John Dryden as Poet Laureate in 1688 when his party, the Whigs, came into power. He was responsible for commissioning composers such as Locke and Weldon to turn the Davenant/Dryden version of The Tempest into an opera, The Enchanted Island. 1.
With almost 40 plays, 154 sonnets, and many longer poems, Shakespeare dominates English literature of his time, and world literature for ever after. To attempt a thumbnail biography would be both unnecessary and impossible. 1.
Aged only 30, Shaw was the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Music for her ground-breaking Partita for Eight Voices (2013). She performs regularly as a violinist (which she began at age 2), and vocalist (with the group Roomful of Teeth, for whom she wrote Partita), and even with rapper Kanye West. Composition was a comparatively late career choice. 12.
Sibelius "is widely regarded as his country's greatest composer, and his music is often credited with having helped Finland develop a national identity during its struggle for independence from Russia" [Wikipedia]. In addition to his seven symphonies, at least two of which have become repertoire standards, he wrote a number of tone poems based on Finnish history and myth, such as Finlandia, Tapiola, the Lemminkainen Legends, and the Karelia Suite. 1.
The eldest of three literary siblings (with Osbert and Sacheverell) from an aristocratic family, Edith was a fixture in London artistic circles in the earlier 20th century, as famous for her eccentric costuming and manner as for her modernist poetry. Her collection Façade was set to music by William Walton in 1922. 10.
A protégé of Oscar Hammerstein's, Sondheim made his Boadway debut in 1957 as lyricist for West Side Story, but he soon began his own string of musicals, writing the music as well as the words, including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), A Little Night Music (1973), and Sweeney Todd (1979). Often dealing with non-traditional subjects, these and others largely redefined the Broadway in the later 20th century. 9.
Sophocles wrote over 120 plays, but only 7 have survived in full. Among these, however, are Oedipus Rex and Antigone, two of the cornerstones of Greek Tragedy. 3.
Starting as an enfant terrible in Paris with the ballets he wrote for Serge Diaghilev, he gradually pared back his resources, developing a neo-classical style between about 1930 and 1955, but eventually turning his back on tonality. 2, 3, 6, 10.
Sullivan essentially had two careers: as a classical composer of orchestra music and oratorios on suitably uplifting subjects, and as the musical partner to W. S. Gilbert on the highly successful series of Savoy Operas from HMS Pinafore (1878) to The Gondoliers (1889) and beyond. History only remembers him in the latter role. 8.
Taglioni was an Italian dancer who performed at the Paris Opéra before taking up an appointment as balletmaster with the Royal Swedish Ballet. There, he married a Swedish singer who bore him two children, Marie and Paul, both of whom became successful dancers. His name is best remembered in conjunction with Marie, who became the first superstar ballerina under his training and management, and for whom he choreographed the first defining Romantic ballet, La sylphide, in 1832. 6.
Taymor studied mime in Paris, physical theater in New York, and Asian arts in Seattle all before graduating from Oberlin. After graduation, she spent two years in Japan and Indonesia, both learning traditional skills from others and developing her own company. These experiences have been the root of her signature mixed-media style, as seen in such productions as The Lion King (1997) on Broaway and The Magic Flute (2005) for the Met. 2, 3.
Tchaikovsky was the first Russian composer to gain an international reputation, in part because his Russian voice was allied to a thorough training in Western parctice. His symphonies, tone-poems, and ballets have become staples of their repertoire, but his dozen operas are less well-known, except for Eugene Onegin (1879) and The Queen of Spades (1890), both based on texts by Pushkin. 6.
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Verdi's two dozen or more operas (depending on how you count them) make him the leading Italian opera composer of his time and among the two or three greatest opera composers ever. After what he called his "years in the galleys," he hit his stride in the early 1850s with the trio of Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, and La Traviata. He intended Aïda (1870) to be his last work, but was persuaded out of retirement to write his final Shakespearean masterpieces: Otello (1886) and Falstaff (1893). 7, 11.
Wagner almost single-handedly transformed the nature not only of opera but also of harmony and orchestration. His 10 mature operas include Tristan und Isolde (1865), Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868), and the vast tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (completed 1876), for which he had a special theater built at Bayreuth. His final opera, Parsifal (1882), was written for exclusive performance at that theater. 7, 11.
Born in Ireland, Walshe received training in Scotland, Illinois, and Germany, before beginning a career writing in a variety of media, often with a social or political agenda, and often including herself as a singing actor. She was elected Professor of Composition at Oxford in 2021. 12.
After starting as something of an enfant terrible, he left England to live on the island of Ischia, where he continued the slow production of works in traditional genres (symphonies, concertos, oratorios), most of which have stayed in the repertoire. Among his most successful works is the oratorio Belshazzar's Feast (1931), which employs huge forces in a riot of pagan celebration. 10.
Weill became famous in Berlin for his collaborations with Bertolt Brecht, among them The Threepenny Opera (1928, a satirical adaptation of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera,) and the political opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930). Fleeing Nazi Germany, he eventually settled in New York in 1935, finding new fame on Broadway, but also writing more operatic fare such as Street Scene (1946, with Langston Hughes). 9, 10.
Weldon was a pupil of Henry Purcell and was probably the actual composer of the 1695 Tempest adaptation The Enchanted Island more commonly associated with his mentor. 1.
Whistler's American father was a railroad engineer who took work in Russia when the future artist was still a child, so his training and career took place almost entirely in Europe. He was famous for giving his near-abstract paintings titles such as Arrangement in Grey and Black (the portrait of his mother), thus emphasizing the connection between painting and music. 8.
Willaert's music traveled to Italy before he himself did, at the age of 25. But that was where he spent the rest of his career, in court appointments in Ferrara and Milan, and latterly as maestro di cappella of St. Mark's in Venice, becoming the founder of an important musical tradition that was to last through the 17th century. He also composed many secular compositions to Italian texts. 3.