Maestro Anton Coppola (born Antonio March 21, 1917) is an American opera conductor and composer. He is the uncle of film director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire, as well as the great-uncle of Nicolas Cage, Sofia Coppola, Gian-Carlo Coppola, Jason Schwartzman and Robert Schwartzman, and is the brother of American composer and musician Carmine Coppola.

Coppola started his career at the age of eight with the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus. He served as an army bandmaster during World War II, conductor at Radio City Music Hall and director of both the Symphony and Opera Departments at the Manhattan School of Music. He earned a Bachelor's degree (1964) and a Master's degree (1965) in composition from Manhattan School of Music and received honorary Doctorates from the University of Tampa and Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.

Coppola's initial marriage was Marion Jane Miller, a ballet dancer, with whom he had one child, Susan Marion Coppola (1943-2008). After their divorce, he wed Almarinda Drago, also a ballet dancer, with whom he had two children, Lucia and Bruno Coppola.

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒaːkomo putˈtʃiːni]; 22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire. Some of his arias, such as "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi, "Che gelida manina" from La bohème, and "Nessun dorma" from Turandot, have become part of popular culture.

Described by Encyclopædia Britannica Online as "one of the greatest exponents of operatic realism", he is regarded as one of the last major Italian opera composers. His repertoire is essentially rooted in verismo, or a post-Romantic operatic tradition and literary style. Whilst his work is essentially based on traditional late-19th century Italian opera, his music shows some influences from then-contemporary composers and movements such as Igor Stravinsky and Impressionism. Common themes within his operas include the important role, yet usually tragic end, of his heroines, as well as love; furthermore, there is a strong presence of exoticism in his operas, with several being set in faraway locations.

Angela Gheorghiu (Romanian pronunciation: [anˈd͡ʒela ɡe̯orˈɡi.u] ( listen); born Angela Burlacu September 7, 1965) is a Romanian soprano. Since her professional debut in 1990, she has performed in the leading roles of several operas at New York's Metropolitan Opera, London's Royal Opera House, the Vienna State Opera, Milan's La Scala, and many other opera houses in Europe and the United States. She has a substantial discography primarily with EMI Classics and Decca.

Gheorghiu was born in 1965 in Adjud, Romania. Along with her sister Elena Dan, she sang opera music from an early age. At age 14, Gheorghiu began to study singing at the National University of Music Bucharest, primarily under Mia Barbu. Her graduation in 1990 coincided with the overthrow and execution of Nicolae Ceaușescu the previous year, enabling her to seek an international career immediately. Her professional opera debut took place at the Cluj-Napoca Romanian National Opera as Mimì in La bohème in 1990, the same year she won the Belvedere International Competition.

Anna Moffo (June 27, 1932 – March 9, 2006) was an Italian-American opera singer and one of the leading lyric-coloratura sopranos of her generation. She possessed a warm and radiant voice of considerable range and agility, and was an affecting singing-actress of great physical beauty^{[neutrality is disputed]}.

She was born in Wayne, Pennsylvania to Italian parents, Nicola Moffo (a shoemaker) and his wife Regina Cinti. After graduating from Radnor High School, she turned down an offer to go to Hollywood and went instead to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she studied with Eufemia Giannini-Gregory, sister of soprano Dusolina Giannini. In 1954, on a Fulbright Program scholarship, she left for Italy to complete her studies at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome where she was a pupil of Mercedes Llopart and Luigi Ricci. Moffo made her official operatic debut in 1955 in Spoleto as Norina in Don Pasquale.

Shortly after, still virtually unknown and little experienced, she was offered the challenging role of Cio-Cio-San in an Italian television (RAI) production of Madama Butterfly. The telecast aired on January 24, 1956, and made Moffo an overnight sensation throughout Italy. Offers quickly followed and she appeared in two other television productions that same year, as Nannetta in Falstaff and as Amina in La Sonnambula. She appeared as Zerlina in Don Giovanni, at the Aix-en-Provence Festival and made her recording debut for EMI as Nannetta (Falstaff) under Herbert von Karajan, and as Musetta in La Bohème with Maria Callas, Giuseppe di Stefano and Rolando Panerai. The following year (1957) saw her debut at the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival, at La Scala in Milan and the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (Italian pronunciation: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈverdi]; 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century. His works are frequently performed in opera houses throughout the world and, transcending the boundaries of the genre, some of his themes have long since taken root in popular culture – such as "La donna è mobile" from Rigoletto, "Va, pensiero" (The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) from Nabucco, "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" (The Drinking Song) from La traviata and the "Grand March" from Aida.

Verdi’s masterworks dominate the standard opera repertoire a century and a half after their composition.

Verdi was born the son of Carlo Giuseppe Verdi and Luigia Uttini in Le Roncole, a village near Busseto, then in the Département Taro which was a part of the First French Empire after the annexation of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza. The baptismal register, on 11 October lists him as being "born yesterday", but since days were often considered to begin at sunset, this could have meant either 9 or 10 October. The next day, he was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church in Latin as Joseph Fortuninus Franciscus. The day after that (Tuesday), Verdi's father took his newborn the three miles to Busseto, where the baby was recorded as Joseph Fortunin François; the clerk wrote in French. "So it happened that for the civil and temporal world Verdi was born a Frenchman."