Artists
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Antonio Vivaldi *III 4 1678 — The Life You Give
Antonio Vivaldi, born Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, on March 4 1678, in Venice, Republic of Venice [Italy], is the composer and violinist who left a decisive mark on the form of the concerto and the style of late Baroque instrumental music. Vivaldi’s main teacher was probably his father, Giovanni Battista, who in 1685 was admitted as…
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Kurt Weill *III 2 1900 — The Life You Give
Kurt Weill, born March 2, 1900, in Dessau, Germany, is the composer who created a revolutionary kind of opera of sharp social satire in collaboration with the writer Bertolt Brecht. Weill studied privately with Albert Bing and at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Berlin with Engelbert Humperdinck. He gained some experience as an opera…
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Bedřich Smetana *III 2 1824 — The Life You Give
Bedřich Smetana, born March 2, 1824, in Leitomischl, Bohemia, Austrian Empire [now Litomyšl, Czech Republic], was composer of operas and symphonic poems, and founder of the Czech national school of music. He was the first truly important Bohemian nationalist composer. Smetana studied music under his father, an amateur violinist. He early took up piano under…
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Frédéric Chopin *III 1 1810 — The Life You Give
Frédéric Chopin, Fryderyk Franciszek Szopen, on March 1, 1810, in Żelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, Duchy of Warsaw [now in Poland], was the composer and pianist of the Romantic period, best known for his solo pieces for piano and his piano concerti. Although he wrote little but piano works, many of them brief, Chopin ranks as…
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Gioachino Rossini *II 29 1792 — The Life You Give
Gioachino Rossini, born Gioachino Antonio Rossini, on February 29 1792, in Pesaro, Papal States [Italy], is the composer noted for his operas, particularly his comic operas, of which The Barber of Seville (1816), Cinderella (1817), and Semiramide (1823) are among the best known. Of his later, larger-scale dramatic operas, the most widely heard is William…
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Renata Scotto *II 24 1934 –The Life You Give
Renata Scotto’s long and successful operatic career was marked by a rare combination of dramatic intensity and vocal flexibility, which allowed her to traverse a wide variety of styles. She believed strongly in the theatrical elements of performing and always focused her energies on the meaning of a text. She also felt much of the…
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Georg Friedrich Händel *II 23 1685 — The Life You Give
George Frideric Handel, German (until 1715) Georg Friedrich Händel, Händel also spelled Haendel, (born February 23, 1685, Halle, Brandenburg [Germany]—died April 14, 1759, London, England), German-born English composer of the late Baroque era, noted particularly for his operas, oratorios, and instrumental compositions. He wrote the most famous of all oratorios, Messiah (1741), and is also…
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Luis Buñuel *II 22 1900 — The Life You Give / La Vida Que Das
Luis Buñuel, born Luis Buñuel Portolés on February 22, 1900, Calanda, Aragón, Spain, is the filmmaker who was a leading figure in Surrealism, the tenets of which suffused both his life and his work. An unregenerate atheist and communist sympathizer who was preoccupied with themes of gratuitous cruelty, eroticism, and religious mania, he won early…
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Andrés Segovia *II 21 1893 — La Vida Que Das / The Life You Give
Andrés Segovia, nacido en Linares, España, el 21 de febrero del 1893, es el guitarrista y pedagogo cual, junto a Narciso Yepes, fue el principal responsable de la consolidación de la guitarra como instrumento de concierto, a un nivel comparable al que ocupan el violín y el piano, al menos en cuanto a la calidad…
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Renée Lynn Fleming *II 14 1959 / The Life You Give
Renée Fleming, born February 14, 1959, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., is a soprano noted for the beauty and richness of her voice and for the thought and sensitivity she brings to the texts. Fleming’s repertoire is extraordinarily broad, spanning three centuries and ranging from Handel and Mozart through 19th-century bel canto to the works of…
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Peter Gabriel *II 13 1950 — The Life You Give
There is a complex, dotted, and cloudy line that divides or unites an individual in two. I am referring to what seems to be two sources and periods in the life of Peter Gabriel, as I see, hear, and think about his music. One Gabriel is the period during his work as front man to…
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Leopold Godowsky *II 13 1870 — The Life You Give
Leopold Godowsky, born February 13, 1870, in Soshly, near Vilnius, Lithuania, Russian Empire, is the renowned Russian-born American virtuoso pianist and composer, known for his exceptional piano technique. Godowsky entered the Berlin High School for Music at age 14; soon thereafter he went to the United States, where he spent most of the remainder of…
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Bertolt Brecht *II 10 1898 — The Life You Give
Bertolt Brecht, born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, on February 10 1898, in Augsburg, Germany, is the poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer whose epic theatre departed from the conventions of theatrical illusion and developed the drama as a social and ideological forum for leftist causes. Until 1924 Brecht lived in Bavaria, where he was born, studied…
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Leontyne Price *II 10 1927 — The Life You Give
Metropolitan Opera audiences began an extraordinary love affair with American soprano Leontyne Price immediately upon her debut on January 27, 1961. She was by then an internationally heralded singer and an experienced, refined musician and artist. But more than anything, it was the sheer beauty of her voice that excited her listeners. What they heard…
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Gerhard Richter *II 9 1932 — The Live You Give
Gerhard Richter, born on February 9, 1932, in Dresden, Germany, is the painter known for his diverse painting styles and subjects. His deliberate lack of commitment to a single stylistic direction has often been read as an attack on the implicit ideologies embedded in the specific histories of painting. Such distaste for aesthetic dogma has…
Sila Blume 