Jonathan Firth (born 6 April 1967) is a British actor best known for his roles in such noted British television productions as Middlemarch, Far from the Madding Crowd, and Victoria & Albert.

Jonathan Firth was born in Essex, England. His mother, Shirley Jean (née Rolles), and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, were both children of Methodist missionaries in India, and both worked as teachers in Nigeria after their marriage. He is the younger brother of actor Colin Firth and voice coach Kate Firth. The family moved many times, from Essex to Billericay and Brentwood, and then to St. Louis in the U.S. for a year when Jonathan was five. Upon returning to England the family settled in Winchester, where his father became a history lecturer at King Alfred's College and his mother was a comparative religion lecturer at King Alfred's College Winchester (now the University of Winchester). Firth's desire to become an actor surfaced, he said, when he performed in a school play at the age of eleven.

Girolamo Aleandro (also Hieronymus or Jerome Aleander) (13 February 1480 – 1 February 1542) was an Italian cardinal, and the first cardinal appointed in pectore.

Born at Motta di Livenza, province of Treviso, on February 13, 1480. He studied at Venice, where he became acquainted with Erasmus and Aldus Manutius, and at an early age was reputed one of the most learned men of the time. In 1508 he went to Paris on the invitation of Louis XII as professor of belles lettres, and held for a time the position of Rector of the University of Paris. He was an early teacher of Greek at the University and edited texts by Isocrates and Plutarch printed by Gilles de Gourmont in 1509/1510. Entering the service of Eberhard, prince-bishop of Liège, he was sent by that prelate on a mission to Rome, where Pope Leo X retained him, giving him (1519) the office of librarian of the Vatican. In the following year he went to Germany to be present as papal nuncio at the coronation of Charles V, and was also present at the diet of Worms, where he headed the opposition to Luther, advocating the most extreme measures to repress the doctrines of the reformer. His conduct evoked the fiercest denunciations of Luther, but it also displeased more moderate men and especially Erasmus. The edict against the reformer, which was finally adopted by the emperor and the diet, was drawn up and proposed by Aleandro.

Gustav Mahler (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʊstaf ˈmaːlɐ]; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then the Austrian Empire, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic. Then his family moved to nearby Iglau (now Jihlava) where Mahler grew up.

As a composer, he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.

Born in humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism from Judaism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.