Francisco Goya

Sunday, 13 January 2013

FRANCISCO GOYA - The Black Paintings - Music by Perry Frank

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Aragon
Aragon ( /ˈærəɡɒn/ or /ˈærəɡən/), also known in Spanish and Aragonese as Aragón ([aɾaˈɣon]) and in Catalan as Aragó ([əɾəˈɣo] or [aɾaˈɣo]), is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces (from north to south): Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza (also called Saragossa in English). The current Statute of Autonomy declares Aragon a nationality of Spain.
Aragon's northern province of Huesca borders France and is positioned in the middle of the Pyrenees. Within Spain, the community is flanked by Catalonia on the east, Valencia and Castile–La Mancha to the south, and Castile and León, La Rioja, and Navarre to the west.
Covering an area of 47,719 km² (18,424 sq mi), the region's terrain ranges diversely from permanent glaciers to verdant valleys, rich pasture lands and orchards, through to the arid steppe plains of the central lowlands. Aragon is home to many rivers—most notably, the river Ebro, Spain's largest river in volume, which runs west-east across the entire region through the province of Zaragoza. It is also home to the Aneto, the highest mountain in the Pyrenees.

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Bordeaux
Coordinates: 44°50′19″N 0°34′42″W / 44.8386°N 0.5783°W / 44.8386; -0.5783
Bordeaux (French pronunciation: [bɔʁdo]; Gascon: Bordèu; Basque: Bordele) is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.
The Bordeaux metropolitan area has a population of 1,105,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture of the Gironde department. Its inhabitants are called Bordelais.
Bordeaux is the world's major wine industry capital. It is home to the world's main wine fair, Vinexpo, while the wine economy in the metro area moves 14.5 billion euros each year.Bordeaux wine has been produced in the region since the 8th century. The historic part of the city is on the UNESCO World Heritage List as "an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble" of the 18th century.
Between 30,000 and 20,000 years ago the area of Bordeaux was inhabited by the Neanderthal, whose remains have been found at a famous cave known as Pair-non-Pair, near Bourg sur Gironde, just north of Bordeaux. In historical times, around 300 BC it was the settlement of a Celtic tribe, the Bituriges Vivisci, who named the town Burdigala, probably of Aquitainian origin. The name Bourde is still the name of a river south of the city.

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Bourbon Restoration
The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution (1789–1799), the end of the First Republic (1792–1804), and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon (1804–1814/1815) – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the heirs of the House of Bourbon, who once again became possessors of the Kingdom of France. The Bourbon Restoration existed from (about) 6 April 1814 until the popular uprisings of the July Revolution of 1830, excepting the interval of the "Hundred Days", less than a full year into the Restoration, when the Bourbon monarchy had again made themselves so unpopular with the general population of France that the family was again forced to flee Paris and France for Ghent, ahead of exploding civil disorders and collapsing civil authority.
At the beginning of the Hundred Days, deposed Emperor Napoleon I returned triumphantly to Paris from Elba. He was greeted with dizzy acclaim and joy by French crowds lining the roads. Coming from far away with advance news spreading of his approach all along the way, crowds swelled his army overnight at his back, growing at every step, even by aggregating the very troops sent to arrest him by the monarchy on several occasions. With the flight of the king, after reaching Paris, he re-announced and reclaimed his dignities as Emperor. The European Great Powers were nowhere near as welcoming, and they quickly mobilized armies once more. This resulted in Napoleon's decisive defeat in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo.

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Fuendetodos
Fuendetodos is a small town in the Campo de Belchite comarca, Aragon, Spain, located about 44 kilometers south-east of Zaragoza. It has a population of approximately 170.
The painter Francisco de Goya was born there in 1746. The artist's birth house and a museum dedicated to his work are located in the village. This town has nearly 25,000 visitors each year.
Fuendetodos is located in the Aragonese comarca of Campo de Belchite, 44 km to the southwest of Zaragoza.
It has a population of 174 inhabitants (INE 2008).
The name of this town is due to theOldSource (the source of all) and was originally namedFuentedetodos. From the 14th century, the village was the domain of the family Fernandez de Heredia, known as the Count of Fuentes.
The population has traditionally engaged in rainfed agriculture and livestock of sheep and goats. For centuries, the stone quarries caracoleña, exclusive Fuendetodos and ice industry (he had 22 neverones or ice refrigerators sold mainly to markets Zaragoza) provided significant revenues to the people. Today it has become more important wind power production and all services associated with tourism (20,000 visitors annually).

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Museo del Prado
The Museo del Prado is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It features one of the world's finest collections of European art, from the 12th century to the early 19th century, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection, and unquestionably the best single collection of Spanish art. Founded as a museum of paintings and sculpture, it also contains important collections of other types of works. A new, recently opened wing enlarged the display area by about 400 paintings, and it is currently used mainly for temporary expositions. El Prado is one of the most visited sites in the world, and it is considered to be among the greatest museums of art. The large numbers of works by Velázquez and Francisco de Goya (the artist more extensively represented in the collection), Titian, Rubens and Bosch are among the highlights of the collection.
The collection currently comprises around 7,600 paintings, 1,000 sculptures, 4,800 prints and 8,200 drawings, in addition to a large number of other works of art and historic documents. By 2012 the Museum will be displaying about 1300 works in the main buildings, while around 3,100 works are on temporary loan to various museums and official institutions. The remainder are in storage.

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Parma
Parma listen (help·info) (Emilian: Pärma) is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its prosciutto, cheese, architecture and surrounding countryside. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world. Parma is divided into two parts by the little stream with the same name. Parma's Etruscan name was adapted by Romans to describe the round shield called Parma.
The Italian poet Attilio Bertolucci (born in a hamlet in the countryside) wrote: "As a capital city it had to have a river. As a little capital it received a stream, which is often dry". The district on the far side of the river is Oltretorrente.
Parma was already a built-up area in the Bronze Age. It has been verified by now that in the current position of the city rose a terramare. The "terramare" (marl earth) were ancient villages in structural wood on pile-dwelling built according to a defined scheme and squared form, built on the dry land, generally in proximity of the rivers. During this age (among the 1500 BC and the 800 BC) the first necropolises (placed where stand the present-day Piazza Duomo and Millstone Square) rose also.

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Pomona College
Pomona College is a private, residential, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. Founded in 1887 in Pomona, California by a group of Congregationalists, the college moved to Claremont in 1889 to the site of a hotel, retaining its name. The school enrolls 1,548 students.
The founding member of the Claremont Colleges, Pomona is a non-sectarian, coeducational school. Its founders strove to create "a college of the New England type". In order to reach this goal, the board of trustees included graduates of Williams, Dartmouth, Colby and Yale. Since 1925, the Claremont Colleges, which have grown to include five undergraduate and two graduate institutions, have provided Pomona's student body with the resources of a larger university while preserving the closeness of a small college. Pomona is currently ranked 4th in National Liberal Arts Colleges by U.S. News & World Report and is the 9th most selective private university in the United States.
Pomona College was established as a coeducational institution on October 14, 1887. The group’s goal was to create a college in the same mold as small New England institutions. The College was originally formed in Pomona; classes first began in a rental house on September 12, 1888. The next year, the school moved to Claremont, at the site of an unfinished hotel. The project was deferred following the suicide of Gwendolyn Rose, who died in the basement during construction. This building would eventually become Sumner Hall, current location of the Admissions and the Office of Campus Life. The name – Pomona College – remained after the relocation. The College’s first graduating class had ten members in 1894.

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Zaragoza
Zaragoza (Spanish pronunciation: [θaɾaˈɣoθa]), also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It is situated on the Ebro river and its tributaries, the Huerva and the Gállego, near the centre of the region, in a valley with a variety of landscapes, ranging from desert (Los Monegros) to thick forest, meadows and mountains.
On 1 September 2010 the population of the city of Zaragoza was 701,090, within its administrative limits on a land area of 1,062.64 km2 (410.29 sq mi), ranking fifth in Spain. It is the 35th most populous municipality in the European Union. The population of the metropolitan area was estimated in 2006 at 783,763 inhabitants. The municipality is home to more than 50 percent of the Aragonese population. The city lies at an elevation of 199 metres.
Zaragoza hosted Expo 2008 in the summer of 2008, a world's fair on water and sustainable development. It was also candidate for the European Capital of Culture in 2016.

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Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz [mit͡sˈkʲɛvit͡ʂ] ( listen)) (Belarusian: Ада́м Берна́рд Міцке́віч; Lithuanian: Adomas Bernardas Mickevičius; 24 December 1798 – 26 November 1855) was a Polish poet, publicist and political writer. A prime representative of the Polish Romantic period, he is one of that country's Three Bards and the greatest poet in all Polish literature. He is also considered one of the greatest Slavic and European poets. He has been described as a "Slavic bard". He was a leading Romantic dramatist and has been compared in Poland and in western Europe to Byron and Goethe.
He is known primarily as the author of the poetic novel Dziady and national epic Pan Tadeusz, which is considered the last great epic of Polish-Lithuanian noble culture. Mickiewicz's other influential works include Konrad Wallenrod and Grażyna. All served as inspiration during regional uprisings and as foundations for the concept of Poland as "the Christ of Nations."
Mickiewicz was active in the struggle to achieve independence for his homeland, then part of the Russian Empire. Having spent five years in internal exile in central Russia for political activities, he left the Empire in 1829 and spent the rest of his life in emigration, like many of his compatriots. He settled first in Rome, later in Paris, where he became professor of Slavic literature at the Collège de France. He died, probably of cholera, at Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire, where he had gone to help organize Polish forces to fight against Russia in the Crimean War. His remains were later moved to Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, Poland.

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Adam Müller
Adam Heinrich Müller (30 June 1779 – 17 January 1829) was a German publicist, literary critic, political economist, theorist of the state and forerunner of economic romanticism.
Müller was born in Berlin. It was intended that he should study Protestant theology, but from 1798 he devoted himself in Göttingen to the study of law, philosophy, and natural science. He was a student of Gustav Hugo. Returning to Berlin, he was persuaded by his friend Friedrich Gentz to take up political science. He had early formed a close intimacy with Gentz, his elder by 15 years; and this connection exercised an important influence both on his material circumstances and his mental development in after life. The two men differed widely in character and in their fundamental principles, but agreed, at least in their later period, in their practical political aims, and the friendship was only terminated by death.
Müller worked for some time as referendary in the Kurmärkische Kammer in Berlin. Müller's relations with the Junker party and his co-operation with them in their opposition to Hardenberg's reforms made any public employment in Prussia impossible for him. He travelled in Sweden and Denmark, spent about two years in Poland, and then went to Vienna, where he was converted to the Catholic faith on 30 April 1805. Through Gentz he became acquainted with Metternich, to whom he was useful in the preparation of state papers.

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Adam Oehlenschläger
Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger (14 November 1779 – 20 January 1850) was a Danish poet and playwright. He introduced romanticism into Danish literature.
He was born in Vesterbro, then a suburb of Copenhagen, on November 14,1779. His father, a Schleswiger by birth, was at that time organist, and later became keeper, of the royal palace of Frederiksberg; he was a very brisk and cheerful man. The poet's mother, on the other hand, who was partly German by extraction, suffered from depression, which afterwards deepened into melancholy madness.
Oehlenschläger and his sister Sofia were allowed their own way throughout their childhood, and were taught nothing, except to read and write, until their twelfth year. At the age of nine, Oehlenschläger began to make fluent verses. Three years later, while walking in Frederiksberg Gardens, he attracted the notice of the poet Edvard Storm, and the result of the conversation was that he received a nomination to the college called Posterity's High School, an important institution of which Storm was the principal. Storm himself taught the class of Scandinavian mythology, and thus Oehlenschläger received his earliest bias towards the poetical religion of his ancestors.

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Adolphe Adam
Adolphe Charles Adam (24 July 1803 – 3 May 1856) was a French composer and music critic. A prolific composer of operas and ballets, he is best known today for his ballets Giselle (1844) and Le corsaire (1856, his last work), his operas Le postillon de Lonjumeau (1836), Le toréador (1849) and Si j'étais roi (1852, often regarded as his finest work), and his Christmas carol "Minuit, chrétiens!" ("O Holy Night") (1847). Adam was also a noted teacher. Léo Delibes was among his pupils.
Adolphe Adam was born in Paris to Louis Adam (1758–1848), who was also a composer, as well a professor at the Paris Conservatoire. His mother was the daughter of a physician. As a child, Adolphe Adam preferred to improvise music on his own rather than study music seriously. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1821, where he studied organ and harmonium under the celebrated opera composer François-Adrien Boieldieu. Adam also played the triangle in the orchestra of the Conservatoire; however, he did not win the Prix de Rome and his father did not encourage him to pursue a music career.

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Alessandro Manzoni
Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Manzoni (7 March 1785 – 22 May 1873) was an Italian poet and novelist. He is famous for the novel The Betrothed (orig. Italian: I Promessi Sposi) (1827), generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature. The novel is also a symbol of the Italian Risorgimento, both for its patriotic message and because it was a fundamental milestone in the development of the modern, unified Italian language.
Manzoni was born in Milan, Italy, on 7 March 1785. Pietro, his father, aged about fifty, belonged to an old family of Lecco, originally feudal lords of Barzio, in the Valsassina. The poet's maternal grandfather, Cesare Beccaria, was a well-known author, and his mother Giulia had literary talent as well. The young Alessandro spent his first two years of life in cascina Costa in Galbiate and he was wet-nursed by Caterina Panzeri, as attested by a memorial plate affixed in the place. In 1792 his parents broke their marriage and his mother began a relationship with the highbrow Carlo Imbonati, moving to England and later to Paris. For this reason, their son was brought up in several religious institutes. Alessandro Manzoni was a slow developer, and at the various colleges he attended he was considered a dunce. At fifteen, however, he developed a passion for poetry, and wrote two sonnets of considerable merit. Upon the death of his father in 1805, he joined the freethinking household of his mother at Auteuil, and spent two years mixing with the literary set of the so-called "ideologues", philosophers of the 18th-century school, among whom he made many friends, notably Claude Charles Fauriel. There too he imbibed the anti-Catholic creed of Voltairianism.

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Alexander Pushkin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Пу́шкин, tr. Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin; IPA: [ɐlʲɪˈksandr sʲɪˈrɡʲejɪvʲɪtɕ ˈpuʂkʲɪn] ( listen); 6 June [O.S. 26 May] 1799 – 10 February [O.S. 29 January] 1837) was a Russian author of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.
Born into the Russian nobility in Moscow, Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen, and was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoye Selo.
While under the strict surveillance of the Tsar's political police and unable to publish, Pushkin wrote his most famous play, the drama Boris Godunov. His novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, was serialized between 1825 and 1832.
Notoriously touchy about his honour, Pushkin fought a total of twenty-nine duels, and was fatally wounded in such an encounter with Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès. D'Anthès, a French officer serving with the Chevalier Guard Regiment, had been attempting to seduce the poet's wife, Natalya Pushkina. Pushkin's early death at the age of 37 is still regarded as a catastrophe for Russian literature.

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Alexandre Herculano
Alexandre Herculano de Carvalho e Araújo (born March 28, 1810 in Lisbon – died September 13, 1877 in Santarém), was a Portuguese novelist and historian.
Herculano's family had humble origins. One of his grandfathers was a foreman stonemason in the royal employ. Herculano received his early education, comprising Latin, logic and rhetoric, at the Necessidades Monastery, and spent a year at the Royal Marine Academy studying mathematics with the intention of entering on a commercial career. In 1828 Portugal fell under the absolute rule of D. Miguel, and Herculano, becoming involved in the unsuccessful military pronunciamento of August 1831, had to leave Portugal clandestinely and take refuge in England and France. In 1832 he accompanied the Liberal expedition to Terceira Island as a volunteer, and was one of D. Pedro's famous army of 7500 men who landed at the Mindelo and occupied Oporto. He took part in all the actions of the great siege, and at the same time served as a librarian in the city archives. He published his first volume of verses, A Voz de Propheta, in 1832, and two years later another entitled A Harpa do Crente.

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Alfred de Musset
Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay(11 December 1810 – 2 May 1857) was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist. Along with his poetry, he is known for writing La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century, autobiographical) from 1836.
Musset was born on 11 December 1810 in Paris. His family was upper-class but poor and his father worked in various key government positions, but never gave his son any money. His mother was similarly accomplished, and her role as a society hostess - for example her drawing-room parties, luncheons, and dinners, held in the Musset residence - left a lasting impression on young Alfred.
Early indications of Musset's boyhood talents were seen by his fondness for acting impromptu mini-plays based upon episodes from old romance stories he had read. Years later, elder brother Paul de Musset would preserve these, and many other details, for posterity, in a biography on his famous younger brother.
Alfred de Musset entered the collège Henri-IV at the age of nine, where in 1827 he won the Latin essay prize in the Concours général. With the help of Paul Foucher, Victor Hugo's brother-in-law, he began to attend, at the age of 17, the Cénacle, the literary salon of Charles Nodier at the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. After attempts at careers in medicine (which he gave up owing to a distaste for dissections), law, drawing, English and piano, he became one of the first Romantic writers, with his first collection of poems, Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie (1829, Tales of Spain and Italy). By the time he reached the age of 20, his rising literary fame was already accompanied by a sulphurous reputation fed by his dandy side.

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Almeida Garrett
João Baptista da Silva Leitão de Almeida Garrett, Viscount of Almeida Garrett (February 4, 1799 – December 9, 1854) was a Portuguese poet, playwright, novelist and politician. He is considered to be the introducer of the Romanticism in Portugal. He is regarded as one of history's greatest romantics and a true revolutionary and humanist.
Garrett was born João Leitão da Silva in Porto, the son of António Bernardo da Silva Garrett (1740–1834), a Fidalgo of the Royal Household and Knight of the Order of Christ whose mother was the daughter of an Irish father born in exile in France and an Italian mother born in Spain, and his wife (m. 1796) Ana Augusta de Almeida Leitão (b. Porto, c. 1770). At an early age, around 4 or 5 years old, Garrett changed his name to João Baptista da Silva Leitão, adding a name from his godfather and altering the order of his surnames.
In 1809, his family fled the second French invasion carried out by Soult's troops, seeking refuge in Angra do Heroísmo, Terceira Island, Azores. While in the Azores, he was taught by his uncle, Dom Frei Alexandre da Sagrada Família (Faial, Horta, May 22, 1737 – Terceira, Angra do Heroísmo, April 22, 1818), also a freemason, then the 25th Bishop of Angra (1816–1818) and former Bishop of Malaca and Timor; his two other uncles were Manuel Inácio da Silva Garrett, Archdeacon of Angra, and Inácio da Silva Garrett, also a clergyman of Angra. In childhood, his mulatto Brazilian nanny Rosa de Lima taught him some traditional stories that later influenced his work.

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Aloysius Bertrand
Louis-Jacques-Napoléon “Aloysius” Bertrand (20 April 1807 – 29 April 1841) was a French poet instrumental in the introduction of the prose poem into French literature and is credited with inspiring later Symbolist poets . He wrote a collection of poems entitled Gaspard de la nuit, after which composer Maurice Ravel wrote a suite of the same name, based on the poems "Scarbo", "Ondine", and "Le Gibet".
Bertrand was born in Ceva, Piedmont, Italy (then a part of Napoleonic France) and his family settled in Dijon in 1814. There he developed an interest in the Burgundian capital. His contributions to a local paper lead to recognition by Victor Hugo and Sainte-Beuve. He lived in Paris shortly with little success. He returned to Dijon and continued writing for local newspapers. Gaspard was sold in 1836 but it wasn't published until 1842 after his death of tuberculosis. The book was rediscovered by Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé. It is now considered a classic of poetic and fantastic literature. He died in Paris.

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Antoine Wiertz
Antoine Joseph Wiertz (22 February 1806 – 18 June 1865) was a Belgian romantic painter and sculptor.
Born in Dinant from a relatively poor family, he entered the Antwerp art academy in 1820. Thanks to his protector Pierre-Joseph de Paul de Maibe, a member of the Second Chamber of the States-General, king William I of the Netherlands awarded an annual stipend to Wiertz from 1821 onwards. Between November 1829 and May 1832, he stayed in Paris, where he studied the old masters at the Louvre.
In 1828, Wiertz took part in the Grand Concours, also known as Concours de Rome, but came out only second. He landed the prestigious Prix de Rome only at his second attempt in 1832, which enabled him to go to Rome, where he resided from May 1834 until February 1837. Upon his return, he established himself in Liège with his mother.
During his stay in Rome, Wiertz worked on his first great work, Les Grecs et les Troyens se disputant le corps de Patrocle ("Greeks and Trojans fighting for the body of Patrocles", finished in 1836), on a subject borrowed from canto XVII of Homer's Iliad. It was exhibited in Antwerp in 1837, where it met with some success. Wiertz submitted the work for the Paris Salon of 1838, but it arrived too late and was refused.

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Anton Raphael Mengs
Anton Raphael Mengs (March 22, 1728 – June 29, 1779) was a German painter, active in Rome, Madrid and Saxony, who became one of the precursors to Neoclassical painting.
Mengs was born in 1728 at Ústí nad Labem (German: Aussig) in Bohemia. His father, Ismael Mengs, a Danish painter, established himself finally at Dresden, whence in 1741 he took his son to Rome.
In Rome, his fresco painting of Parnassus at Villa Albani gained him a reputation as a master painter. The appointment of Mengs in 1749 as first painter to Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony, did not prevent his spending much time in Rome, where he had married Margarita Guazzi who had sat for him as a model in 1748, and abjured the Protestant faith, and where he became in 1754 director of the Vatican school of painting, nor did this hinder him on two occasions from obeying the call of Charles III of Spain to Madrid. There Mengs produced some of his best work, and specially the ceiling of the banqueting-hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid, the subject of which was the Triumph of Trajan and the Temple of Glory. Among his pupils there was Agustín Esteve. After the completion of this work in 1777, Mengs returned to Rome, and there he died, two years later, in poor circumstances, leaving twenty children, seven of whom were pensioned by the king of Spain. His portraits and self-portraits recall an attention to detail and insight, often lost from the grand manner paintings.

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Anton Reicha
Anton (Antonín, Antoine) Reicha (Rejcha) (26 February 1770 – 28 May 1836) was a Bohemia-born, later naturalized French composer. A contemporary and lifelong friend of Beethoven, Reicha is now best remembered for his substantial early contribution to the wind quintet literature and his role as a teacher – his pupils included Franz Liszt and Hector Berlioz. Reicha was also an accomplished theorist and wrote several treatises on various aspects of composition. Some of his theoretical work dealt with experimental methods of composition, which he applied in a variety of works such as fugues and études for piano and string quartets.
Reicha was born in Prague into a family of a town piper. His father died when Reicha was just 10 months old, and his mother was uninterested in the boy's education. At the age of 10 the young composer ran away from home, and was subsequently raised and educated in music by his uncle Josef Reicha. When the family moved to Bonn, Josef secured for his nephew a place at the Hofkapelle, but for Reicha this was not enough. He studied composition secretly, against his uncle's wishes, and entered the University of Bonn in 1789. When Bonn was captured by the French in 1794, Reicha had to flee to Hamburg, where he made his living by teaching harmony and composition, and studied mathematics and philosophy. Between 1799 and 1801 he lived in Paris, trying to achieve recognition as an opera composer, without success. In 1801 he moved to Vienna, where he studied with Salieri and Albrechtsberger and produced his first important works. His life was once again affected by war in 1808, when he had to leave Vienna. Reicha settled in Paris, where he spent the rest of his life teaching composition; in 1818 he was appointed professor at the Conservatoire.

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Antoni Malczewski
Antoni Malczewski (3 June 1793 – 2 May 1826) was an influential Polish romantic poet, known for his only work, "a narrative poem of dire pessimism", Maria (1825).
At the times, prominent and scandalizing was his autodestructive romance with married woman, Zofia Rucińska, who suffered from mental illness.
Malczewski was born to a wealthy family in either Volhynia or Warsaw, and attended school in Krzemieniec (modern-day Kremenets, Ukraine), but did not graduate. He joined the army of the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw during the Napoleonic Wars in 1811, and remained in the army of Congress Poland under Emperor Alexander from 1815. He was wounded in the foot in a duel in 1816 and so had to leave the army.
After leaving the army, he spent several years traveling through western Europe, staying some time in Paris, climbing Mont Blanc in 1818, and spending a good portion of his inherited fortune. He returned to his estate in Volhynia in 1821, where he began an ill-fated affair with a married woman and began writing. He moved to Warsaw in 1824, where he published the poetic novel Maria at his own expense in 1825, and died in poverty the next year in unclear circumstances.

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Bedřich Smetana
Bedřich Smetana (Czech pronunciation: [ˈbɛdr̝ɪx ˈsmɛtana] ( listen); 2 March 1824 – 12 May 1884) was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style which became closely identified with his country's aspirations to independent statehood. He is thus widely regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music. Internationally he is best known for his opera The Bartered Bride, for the symphonic cycle Má vlast ("My Fatherland") which portrays the history, legends and landscape of the composer's native land, and for his First String Quartet From My Life.
Smetana was naturally gifted as a pianist, and gave his first public performance at the age of six. After his conventional schooling, he studied music under Josef Proksch in Prague. His first nationalistic music was written during the 1848 Prague uprising, in which he briefly participated. After failing to establish his career in Prague, he left for Sweden, where he set up as a teacher and choirmaster in Gothenburg, and began to write large-scale orchestral works. During this period of his life Smetana was twice married; of six daughters, three died in infancy.

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Bettina von Arnim
Bettina von Arnim (the Countess of Arnim) (4 April 1785, Frankfurt am Main – 20 January 1859, Berlin), born Elisabeth Catharina Ludovica Magdalena Brentano, was a German writer and novelist.
Bettina (as well: Bettine) Brentano was a writer, publisher, composer, singer, visual artist, an illustrator, patron of young talent, and a social activist. She was the archetype of the Romantic era’s zeitgeist and the crux of many creative relationships of canonical artistic figures. Best known for the company she kept, she numbered among her closest friends Goethe, Beethoven, and Pückler and tried to foster artistic agreement among them. Many leading composers of the time, including Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johanna Kinkel, and Johannes Brahms, admired her spirit and talents. As a composer, von Arnim's style was unconventional, molding and melding favorite folk melodies and historical themes with innovative harmonies, phrase lengths, and improvisations that became synonymous with the music of the era.

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Bigas Luna
Juan José Bigas Luna (born March 19, 1946 in Barcelona) is a Spanish film director. He began his professional career in the design world, creating the Estudio Gris with Carlos Riart in 1969. In his earlier exhibitions, at the beginning of the sixties, he showed a great interest in conceptual art and the emerging visual technologies. Esteemed as an atypical director in the Spanish cinema, in 1986 he retired to Tarragona in order to devote his time to painting. In 1990 the producer Andrés Vicente Gómez persuaded him to return to cinema and entrusted to him the direction of Las edades de Lulú (film), a film which reached the general public. Without abandoning his dedication to painting and photography, reflected in numerous exhibitions, he began the well-known Trilogía Ibérica with Jamón Jamón (1992), Huevos de Oro (1993) and La teta y la luna (1994). Subsequently, with the short film for internet Collar de Moscas (2001), he revived his interest in avant-garde experimentation and audiovisual formats and at the same time he discovered a vocation for the investigation of digital cinema after the creation of the Taller Bigas Luna project with Catalina Pons in 1999. The experience in the Taller introduced them to the world of new technologies and in 2002 they promoted PLATAFORM BL, dedicated to the creation and promotion of innovative projects and new talents.

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Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm (German: Brüder Grimm or Die Gebrüder Grimm), Jakob Grimm (January 4, 1785 – September 20, 1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (February 24, 1786 – December 16, 1859), were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who together collected folklore. They are among the most well-known storytellers of European folk tales, and their work popularized such stories as "Cinderella", "The Frog Prince" (Der Froschkönig), "Hansel and Gretel" (Hänsel und Gretel), "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" (Rumpelstilzchen), and "Snow White" (Schneewittchen). Their first collection of folk tales, Children's and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), was published in 1812.
The brothers spent their formative years first in the German town of Hanau and then in Steinau. Their father's death in 1796, about a decade into their lives, caused great poverty for the family and affected the brothers for many years. They attended the University of Marburg where historian and jurist Friedrich von Savigny spurred their interest in philology and Germanic studies—a field in which they are now considered pioneers—and at the same time developed a curiosity for folklore, which grew into a life-long dedication to collecting German folk tales.

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Carl Loewe
Johann Carl Gottfried Loewe (30 November 1796, Löbejün – 20 April 1869), usually called Carl Loewe (sometimes seen as Karl Loewe), was a German composer, baritone singer and conductor. In his lifetime, his songs were well enough known for some to call him the "Schubert of North Germany", and Hugo Wolf came to admire his work. He is less known today, but sometimes his ballads and songs, which amount to over 400, are occasionally performed.
Loewe was born in Löbejün and received his first music lessons from his father. He was a choir-boy, first at Köthen, and later at Halle, where he went to grammar school. The beauty of Loewe's voice brought him under the notice of Madame de Staël, who procured him a pension from Jérôme Bonaparte, then king of Westphalia, which enabled him to further his education in music, and to study theology at Halle University. This ended in 1813, on the flight of the king.
In 1820, he moved to Stettin in Prussia (now Szczecin in Poland), where he worked as organist and music director of the school. It was while there that he did most of his work as a composer, publishing a version of Goethe's Erlkönig in 1824 (written 1817-18) which some say rivals Schubert's far more famous version. He went on to set many other poets' works, including Friedrich Rückert, and translations of William Shakespeare and Lord Byron.

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Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (18 or 19 November 1786 – 4–5 June 1826) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school.
Weber's operas Der Freischütz, Euryanthe and Oberon greatly influenced the development of the Romantic opera in Germany. Der Freischütz came to be regarded as the first German "nationalist" opera, Euryanthe developed the Leitmotiv technique to a hitherto-unprecedented degree, while Oberon anticipated Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream and, at the same time, revealed Weber's lifelong interest in the music of non-Western cultures. This interest was first manifested in Weber's incidental music for Schiller's translation of Gozzi's Turandot, for which he used a Chinese melody, making him the first Western composer to use an Asian tune that was not of the pseudo-Turkish kind popularized by Mozart and others.
A brilliant pianist himself, Weber composed four sonatas, two concertos and the Konzertstück (Concert Piece) in F minor, which influenced composers such as Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn. The Konzertstück provided a new model for the one-movement concerto in several contrasting sections (such as Liszt's, who often played the work), and was acknowledged by Stravinsky as the model for his Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra. Weber's shorter piano pieces, such as the Invitation to the Dance, was later orchestrated by Berlioz, while his Polacca Brillante was later orchestrated by Liszt.

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Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura Atarés (born 4 January 1932, Huesca) is a Spanish film director and photographer.
Born into a family of artists (his mother was a pianist and his brother, Antonio Saura, a painter), he developed his artistic sense in childhood as a photography enthusiast.
He obtained his directing diploma in Madrid in 1957 at the Institute of Cinema Research and Studies. He also taught there until 1963.
In 1957-1958, Saura created his first film (Cuenca). In 1966, he was honored at the 16th Berlin International Film Festival, where he received the Silver Bear for Best Director for his film La caza. In 1967, his film Peppermint Frappé also received the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 18th Berlin International Film Festival. He won the Golden Bear in 1981 at the 31st Berlin International Film Festival for his film Deprisa, Deprisa.
The movies La prima Angélica (Cousin Angélica) of 1973 and Cría cuervos (Raising Ravens [from the Spanish phrase: Cria cuervos y te sacaran los ojos (Raise ravens and they will peck out your eyes)]) of 1975 received the special prize of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. His movie Mama cumple 100 años"(Mom is celebrating her 100 years) was nominated in 1979 for the best foreign film at the Oscar Awards .

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Charles III of Spain
Charles III (Spanish: Carlos III; Italian: Carlo III; 20 January 1716 – 14 December 1788) was the King of Spain and the Spanish Indies from 1759 to 1788. He was the eldest son of Philip V of Spain and his second wife, the Princess Elisabeth Farnese. In 1731, the fifteen-year-old Charles became the Duke of Parma and Piacenza, as Charles I, at the death of his childless great uncle Antonio Farnese, Duke of Parma.
In 1734, as the Duke of Parma, he conquered the kingdoms of Naples and of Sicily, and was crowned as the King of Naples and Sicily on 3 July 1735, reigning as Charles VII of Naples and Charles V of Sicily. In 1738 he married the Princess Maria Amalia of Saxony, an educated, cultured woman who gave birth to thirteen children, eight of whom reached adulthood. Charles and Maria Amalia resided in Naples for nineteen years; she died in 1760.
Upon succeeding to the Spanish throne on 10 August 1759, Charles, a proponent of enlightened absolutism, on 6 October 1759 abdicated the Neapolitan and Sicilian thrones in favour of Ferdinand, his third surviving son, who became Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, or Ferdinand IV of Naples and III of Sicily. Charles III's descendants ruled the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies until 1861.

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Charles IV of Spain
Charles IV (Carlos Antonio Pascual Francisco Javier Juan Nepomuceno Jose Januario Serafin Diego; 11 November 1748 – 20 January 1819) was King of Spain from 14 December 1788 until his abdication on 19 March 1808.
Charles was the second son of Charles III and his wife Maria Amalia of Saxony. He was born at Naples (11 November 1748), while his father was king of the Two Sicilies. His elder brother Don Felipe was passed over for the two thrones as mentally retarded and epileptic. In Naples and Sicily he was styled as the Prince of Taranto.
Charles had inherited a great frame and immense physical strength from the Saxon line of his mother, granddaughter of August the Strong. When young he was fond of wrestling with the strongest countrymen he could find. While he was considered by many to be intellectually sluggish and quite credulous he was also known for his acts of kindness.
In 1788, Charles III died and Charles IV succeeded to the throne. Even though he had a profound belief in the sanctity of his office and kept up the appearance of an absolute, powerful monarch, he never took more than a passive part in the direction of his own government, occupying himself with hunting. The affairs of government he left to his wife and his prime minister. In 1792, Maria Luisa finally succeeded in ousting the Count of Floridablanca from office and had him replaced with Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, Count of Aranda, the chief of the Aragonese party. However, in the wake of the war against Republican France, the liberal-leaning Count of Aranda was replaced by Manuel de Godoy, a favourite of the Queen and allegedly her lover, who thenceforth enjoyed the lasting favour of the King.

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Clara Schumann
Clara Schumann (née Clara Josephine Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German musician and composer, considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era. She exerted her influence over a 61-year concert career, changing the format and repertoire of the piano recital and the tastes of the listening public. Her husband was the composer Robert Schumann. She and her husband encouraged Johannes Brahms, and she was the first pianist to give public performances of some of Brahms' works, notably the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel.
Clara Josephine Wieck was born in Leipzig on 13 September 1819 to Friedrich and Marianne Wieck (née Tromlitz). Her parents divorced when she was four years old; Clara was raised by her father. One of her father's students would scare Clara and dress up as ghosts but when she was older, she married him. In March 1828, at the age of eight, the young Clara Wieck performed at the Leipzig home of Dr. Ernst Carus, director of a mental hospital at Colditz Castle, and met another gifted young pianist invited to the musical evening named Robert Schumann, nine years older than her. Schumann admired Clara's playing so much that he asked permission from his mother to discontinue his studies of the law, which had never interested him much, and take music lessons with Clara's father, Friedrich Wieck. While taking lessons, he took rooms in the Wieck household, staying about a year.

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Clemens Brentano
Clemens Brentano, or Klemens Brentano (September 9, 1778 – July 28, 1842) was a German poet and novelist.
He was born in Ehrenbreitstein, near Koblenz, Germany. His sister was Bettina von Arnim, Goethe's correspondent. His father's family was of Italian descent. He studied in Halle and Jena, afterwards residing at Heidelberg, Vienna and Berlin. He was close to Wieland, Herder, Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel, Fichte and Tieck.
From 1798 to 1800 Brentano lived in Jena, the first center of the romantic movement. In 1801, he moved to Göttingen, and became a friend of Achim von Arnim. He married writer Sophie Mereau on 29 October 1803. In 1804, he moved to Heidelberg and worked with Arnim on Zeitungen für Einsiedler and Des Knaben Wunderhorn. After his wife Sophie died in 1806 he married a second time in 1807 to Auguste Busmann. In the years between 1808 and 1818, he lived mostly in Berlin, and from 1819 to 1824 in Dülmen, Westphalia.
In 1818, weary of his somewhat restless and unsettled life, he returned to the practice of the Catholic faith and withdrew to the monastery of Dülmen, where he lived for some years in strict seclusion. He took on there the position of secretary to the Catholic visionary nun, the Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, of whom it was said that, during the last twelve years of her life, she could eat no food except Holy Communion, nor take any drink except water, subsisting entirely on the Holy Eucharist.

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Cyprian Norwid
Cyprian Kamil Norwid, a.k.a. Cyprian Konstanty Norwid (Polish pronunciation: [ˈt͡sɨprjan ˈnɔrvid]; 24 September 1821– 23 May 1883) is a nationally esteemed Polish poet, dramatist, painter, and sculptor. He was born in the Masovian village of Laskowo-Głuchy near Warsaw. One of his maternal ancestors was the Polish King John III Sobieski.
Norwid is regarded as one of the second generation of romantics. He wrote many well-known poems including Fortepian Szopena ("Chopin's Piano"), Moja piosnka [II] ("My Song [II]") and Bema pamięci żałobny-rapsod ("A Funeral Rhapsody in Memory of General Bem"). Norwid led a tragic and often poverty-stricken life (once he had to live in a cemetery crypt). He experienced increasing health problems, unrequited love, harsh critical reviews, and increasing social isolation. He lived abroad most of his life, especially in London and in Paris, where he died.
Norwid’s original and non-conformist style was not appreciated in his lifetime and partially due to this fact, he was excluded from high society. His work was only rediscovered and appreciated during the Young Poland art period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He is now considered one of the four most important Polish Romantic poets. Other literary historians, however, consider this an over-simplification, and regard his style to be more characteristic of classicism and parnassianism.

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César Franck
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck (10 December 1822 – 8 November 1890) was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life.
He was born at Liège, in what is now Belgium (though at the time of his birth it was under the Netherlands' control). In that city he gave his first concerts in 1834. He studied privately in Paris from 1835, where his teachers included Anton Reicha. After a brief return to Belgium, and a disastrous reception to an early oratorio Ruth, he moved to Paris, where he married and embarked on a career as teacher and organist. He gained a reputation as a formidable improviser, and travelled widely in France to demonstrate new instruments built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.
In 1858 he became organist at Sainte-Clotilde, a position he retained for the rest of his life. He became professor at the Paris Conservatoire in 1872; he took French nationality, a requirement of the appointment. His pupils included Vincent d'Indy, Ernest Chausson, Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, Guillaume Lekeu, and Henri Duparc. After acquiring the professorship Franck wrote several pieces that have entered the standard classical repertoire, including symphonic, chamber, and keyboard works.

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Daniel Auber
Daniel François Esprit Auber (French pronunciation: [daɲɛl fʁɑ̃swa ɛspʁi obɛːʁ]) (29 January 1782 – 12/13 May 1871) was a French composer.
The son of a Paris print-seller, Auber was born in Caen in Normandy. Though his father expected him to continue in the print-selling business, he also allowed his son to learn how to play several musical instruments. His first teacher was the Tirolean composer, Josef Alois Ladurner (1769–1851). At the age of 20 Auber was sent to London for business training, but he was obliged to leave England in 1804 when the Treaty of Amiens was breached.
Auber had already attempted musical composition, and at this period produced several concertos pour basse, modeled after violoncellist Lamarre, in whose name they were published. The praise given to his concerto for the violin, which was played at the Paris Conservatoire by Mazas, encouraged him to undertake a resetting of an old comic opera, Julie (1811). He also began to study with the renowned Luigi Cherubini.
In 1813 the unfavourable reception of his one-act debut opera Le Séjour militaire put an end for some years to his attempts as composer. But his failure in business, and the death of his father in 1819, compelled him once more to turn to music. He produced another opera, Le Testament et les billets-doux (1819), which was no better received than the former. But he persevered, and the next year was rewarded by the complete success of La Bergère châtelaine, an opera in three acts.

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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
He was born as Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts; he was orphaned young when his mother died shortly after his father abandoned the family. Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia, but they never formally adopted him. He attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. After enlisting in the Army and later failing as an officer's cadet at West Point, Poe parted ways with the Allans. His publishing career began humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian".

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Emanuel Leutze
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (May 24, 1816, Schwäbisch Gmünd – July 18, 1868) was a German American history painter best known for his painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting.
Leutze was born in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Württemberg (Germany), and was brought to America as a child. His parents settled first in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, then at Fredericksburg, Va. His early education was good, though not especially in the direction of art. The first development of his artistic talent occurred while he was attending the sickbed of his father, when he attempted drawing to occupy the long hours of waiting. His father died in 1831. At 14, he was painting portraits for $5 apiece. Through such work, he supported himself after the death of his father. In 1834, he received his first instruction in art in classes of John Rubens Smith, a portrait painter in Philadelphia. He soon became skilled, and promoted a plan for publishing, in Washington, portraits of eminent American statesmen; however, he met with but slight encouragement.

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Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school. Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish writer Walter Scott and the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modeled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.

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Fanny Mendelssohn
Fanny Mendelssohn (14 November 1805 – 14 May 1847), later Fanny [Cäcilie] Mendelssohn Bartholdy and, after her marriage, Fanny Hensel, was a German pianist and composer, the sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn and granddaughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. She was the grandmother of the philosopher Paul Hensel and the mathematician Kurt Hensel.
Fanny Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, the oldest of four children. She was descended on both sides from distinguished Jewish families; her parents were Abraham Mendelssohn (who was the son of philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and later changed the family surname to Mendelssohn Bartholdy), and Lea, née Salomon, a granddaughter of the entrepreneur Daniel Itzig. She was not however brought up as Jewish, and never practised Judaism, though it has been suggested that she "retained the cultural values of liberal Judaism".
Fanny shared the early musical education and upbringing of her younger brother Felix, including tuition from Carl Friedrich Zelter and others. Zelter indeed at one point favoured Fanny over Felix: he wrote to Goethe in 1816, in a letter introducing Abraham Mendelssohn to the poet, 'He has adorable children and his oldest daughter could give you something of Sebastian Bach. This child is really something special'.

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Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (German pronunciation: [ˈjaːkɔp ˈluːtvɪç ˈfeːlɪks ˈmɛndl̩szoːn baʁˈtɔldi]), born, and generally known in English-speaking countries, as Felix Mendelssohn (3 February 1809 – 4 November 1847) was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period.
The grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn was born into a prominent Jewish family, although initially he was raised without religion and was later baptised as a Lutheran Christian. Mendelssohn was recognised early as a musical prodigy, but his parents were cautious and did not seek to capitalise on his talent.
Early success in Germany, where he also revived interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, was followed by travel throughout Europe. Mendelssohn was particularly well received in Britain as a composer, conductor and soloist, and his ten visits there – during which many of his major works were premiered – form an important part of his adult career. His essentially conservative musical tastes, however, set him apart from many of his more adventurous musical contemporaries such as Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner and Hector Berlioz. The Leipzig Conservatoire (now the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig), which he founded, became a bastion of this anti-radical outlook.

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France Prešeren
France Prešeren ( pronunciation (help·info)) (3 December 1800 – 8 February 1849) was a Slovene Romantic poet. He is considered the Slovene national poet.^{[clarification needed]} Although he was not a particularly prolific author, he inspired virtually all Slovene literature thereafter.
He was born 3 December 1800 (Saturday) in the Upper Carniolan village of Vrba, then part of the Habsburg Monarchy (today in Slovenia), to a relatively well-to-do peasant family. Already as a child, he showed considerable talent, and so his parents decided to provide him with a good education. At the age of eight, he was sent to elementary schools in Grosuplje and Ribnica, run by the local Roman Catholic clergy. In 1812, he moved to the Carniolan provincial capital of Ljubljana, where he attended the State Gymnasium. Already at a very young age, he learned Latin, Ancient Greek, and German, which was then the language of education, administration, and high culture in most areas inhabited by Slovenes. In Ljubljana, Prešeren's talent was spotted by the poet Valentin Vodnik, who encouraged him to develop his literary skills in Slovene. As a high school student, he became friends with the future philologist Matija Čop, who would have an extremely important influence on the development of Prešeren's poetry. In 1821, Prešeren enrolled at the University of Vienna, where he studied law, against the wishes of his mother, who wanted him to become a priest. In Vienna, he became acquainted with the western canon from Homer to Goethe, but he was most fascinated by Dante and the Italian trecentists, especially Petrarch and Boccaccio. He also read contemporary Romantic poets, and he was even fired from a teaching post at Klinkowström's Jesuit institute for having loaned a booklet of banned poetry to his friend Anastasius Grün.

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Francesco Hayez
Francesco Hayez (February 10, 1791 – December 21, 1881) was an Italian painter, the leading artist of Romanticism in mid-19th-century Milan, renowned for his grand historical paintings, political allegories and exceptionally fine portraits.
Hayez came from a relatively poor family from Venice. His father was of French origin while his mother, Chiara Torcella, was from Murano. The child Francesco, youngest of five sons, was brought up by his mother's sister, who had married Giovanni Binasco, a well-off shipowner and collector of art. From childhood he showed a predisposition for drawing, so his uncle apprenticed him to an art restorer. Later he became a student of the painter Francesco Maggiotto with whom he continued his studies for three years. He was admitted to the painting course of the New Academy of Fine Arts in 1806, where he studied under Teodoro Matteini. In 1809 he won a competition from the Academy of Venice for one year of study at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. He remained in Rome until 1814, then moved to Naples where he was commissioned by Joachim Murat to paint a major work depicting Ulysses at the court of Alcinous. In the mid 1830s he attended the "Salotto Maffei" salon in Milan, hosted by Clara Maffei (whose portrait Hayez painted for her husband), and he was still in Milan in 1850 when he was appointed director of the Academy of Brera there.

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Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish pronunciation: [fɾanˈθisko xoˈse ðe ˈɣoʝa i luˈθjentes]; 30 March 1746–16 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era. The subversive and imaginative element in his art, as well as his bold handling of paint, provided a model for the work of later generations of artists, notably Manet, Picasso and Francis Bacon.. In his honour, Spain's main national film awards are called the Goya Awards.
Goya was born in Fuendetodos, Aragón, Spain, in 1746 to José Benito de Goya y Franque and Gracia de Lucientes y Salvador. He spent his childhood in Fuendetodos, where his family lived in a house bearing the family crest of his mother. His father earned his living as a gilder. About 1749, the family bought a house in the city of Zaragoza and some years later moved into it. Goya may have attended school at Escuelas Pias. He formed a close friendship with Martin Zapater at this time, and their correspondence from the 1770s to the 1790s is a valuable source for understanding Goya's early career at the court of Madrid. At age 14, Goya studied under the painter José Luzán. He moved to Madrid where he studied with Anton Raphael Mengs, a painter who was popular with Spanish royalty. He clashed with his master, and his examinations were unsatisfactory. Goya submitted entries for the Royal Academy of Fine Art in 1763 and 1766, but was denied entrance.

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Franz Berwald
Franz Adolf Berwald (July 23, 1796, Stockholm – April 3, 1868) was a Swedish Romantic composer who was generally ignored during his lifetime. He made his living as an orthopedic surgeon and later as the manager of a saw mill and glass factory.
Berwald came from a family with four generations of musicians; his father, a violinist in the Royal Opera Orchestra, taught Franz the violin from an early age; he soon appeared in concerts. In 1811, Karl XIII came to power and reinstated the Royal Chapel; the following year Berwald started working there, as well as playing the violin in the court orchestra and the opera, receiving lessons from Edouard du Puy, and also started composing. The summers were off-season for the orchestra, and Berwald travelled around Scandinavia, Finland and Russia. Of his works from that time, a septet and a serenade he still considered worthwhile music in his later years.
In 1818 Berwald started publishing the Musikalisk journal, later renamed Journal de musique, a periodical with easy piano pieces and songs by various composers as well as some of his own original work. In 1821, his Violin Concerto was premiered by his brother August. It was not well received; some people in the audience burst out laughing during the slow movement.

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Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt (German: [fʁant͡s lɪst]); Hungarian: Liszt Ferencz, in modern use Liszt Ferenc) (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.
Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age. In the 1840s he was considered by some to be perhaps the greatest pianist of all time. He was also a well-known composer, piano teacher, and conductor. He was a benefactor to other composers, including Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg and Alexander Borodin.
As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the "Neudeutsche Schule" ("New German School"). He left behind an extensive and diverse body of work in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated some 20th-century ideas and trends. Some of his most notable contributions were the invention of the symphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form and making radical departures in harmony. He also played an important role in popularizing a wide array of music by transcribing it for piano.

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Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (German pronunciation: [ˈfʁants ˈʃuːbɛɐ̯t]; 31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer.
Although he died at the age of 31, Schubert was a prolific composer, having written some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous "Unfinished Symphony"), liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music. Appreciation of Schubert's music during his lifetime was limited, but interest in his work increased significantly in the decades following his death. Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn, among others, discovered and championed his works in the 19th century. Today, Schubert is seen as one of the leading exponents of the early Romantic era in music and he remains one of the most frequently performed composers.
Schubert was born in Himmelpfortgrund (now a part of Alsergrund), Vienna, on 31 January 1797. His father, Franz Theodor Schubert, the son of a Moravian peasant, was a parish schoolmaster; his mother, Elisabeth Vietz, was the daughter of a Silesian master locksmith, and had also been a housemaid for a Viennese family prior to her marriage. Of Franz Theodor's fourteen children (one illegitimate child was born in 1783), nine died in infancy; five survived. Their father was a well-known teacher, and his school in Lichtental, a part of Vienna's 9th district, was well attended. He was not a musician of fame or with formal training, but he taught his son some elements of music.

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Friedrich Hölderlin
Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (German pronunciation: [ˈjoːhan ˈkʁɪsti.aːn ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈhœldɐliːn]; 20 March 1770 – 7 June 1843) was a major German lyric poet, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his seminary roommates and fellow Swabians Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling.
Hölderlin was born in Lauffen am Neckar in the Duchy of Württemberg. His father, the manager of a church estate, died when the boy was two years old. He was brought up by his mother, who in 1774 married the Mayor of Nürtingen and moved there. He had a full sister, born after their father's death, and a half-brother. His stepfather died when he was nine. He went to school in Denkendorf and Maulbronn and then studied theology at the Tübinger Stift, where his fellow-students included Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (who had been a fellow-pupil at his first school) and Isaac von Sinclair.

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Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller [ˈjoːhan ˈkʁɪstɔf ˈfʁiːdʁɪç fɔn ˈʃɪlɐ] (10 November 1759 – 9 May 1805) was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They frequently discussed issues concerning aesthetics, and Schiller encouraged Goethe to finish works he left as sketches. This relationship and these discussions led to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on Xenien, a collection of short satirical poems in which both Schiller and Goethe challenge opponents to their philosophical vision.
Friedrich Schiller was born on 10 November 1759, in Marbach, Württemberg as the only son of military doctor Johann Kaspar Schiller (1733–96), and Elisabeth Dorothea Kodweiß (1732–1802). They also had five daughters. His father was away in the Seven Years' War when Friedrich was born. He was named after king Frederick the Great, but he was called Fritz by nearly everyone. Kaspar Schiller was rarely home during the war, but he did manage to visit the family once in a while. His wife and children also visited him occasionally wherever he happened to be stationed. When the war ended in 1763, Schiller's father became a recruiting officer and was stationed in Schwäbisch Gmünd. The family moved with him. Due to the high cost of living—especially the rent—the family moved to nearby Lorch.

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Fromental Halévy
Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy (pronounced [fʁɔmɑ̃tal alevi]) (27 May 1799 – 17 March 1862), was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.
Halévy was born in Paris, the son of a cantor, Élie Halfon Halévy, who was the secretary of the Jewish community of Paris, a writer and a teacher of Hebrew, and a French Jewish mother. The name Fromental, by which he was generally known, reflects that he was born on the feast-day of that name in the French Revolutionary calendar, which was still operative at that time. He entered the Conservatoire de Paris at the age of nine or ten (accounts differ), in 1809, becoming a pupil and later protégé of Cherubini. After two second-place attempts, he won the Prix de Rome in 1819: his cantata subject was Herminie.
As he had to delay his departure to Rome because of the death of his mother, he was able to accept the first commission that brought him to public attention - a Marche Funèbre et De Profundis en Hébreu for three part choir, tenor and orchestra, which was commissioned by the Consistoire Israélite du Département de la Seine, for a public service in memory of the assassinated duc de Berry, performed on 24 March 1820. Later, his brother Léon recalled that the De Profundis, "infused with religious fervor, created a sensation, and attracted interest to the young laureate of the institute."

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Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin ( /ˈʃoʊpæn/; French pronunciation: [fʁe.de.ʁik ʃɔ.pɛ̃]; Polish: Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, also phonetically Szopen; 22 February or 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of French-Polish parentage. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music. Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola, a village in the Duchy of Warsaw. A renowned child-prodigy pianist and composer, Chopin grew up in Warsaw and completed his music education there; he composed many mature works in Warsaw before leaving Poland in 1830 at age 20, shortly before the November 1830 Uprising.
Following the Russian suppression of the Uprising, he settled in Paris as part of Poland's Great Emigration. During the remaining 19 years of his life, Chopin gave only some 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon; he supported himself by sales of his compositions and as a piano teacher. After some romantic dalliances with Polish women, including an abortive engagement, from 1837 to 1847 he carried on a relationship with the French writer Amantine Dupin (pen name "George Sand"). For most of his life, Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris in 1849 at age 39.

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Gaetano Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (Italian pronunciation: [doˈmeːniko ɡaeˈtaːno maˈɾia doniˈdzetti]; 29 November 1797 – 8 April 1848) was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore (1832), Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), and Don Pasquale (1843), all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment (both from 1840). Along with Vincenzo Bellini and Gioachino Rossini, he was a leading composer of bel canto opera.
The youngest of three sons, Donizetti was born in 1797 in Bergamo's Borgo Canale quarter located just outside the city walls. His family was very poor with no tradition of music, his father being the caretaker of the town pawnshop. Nevertheless, Donizetti received some musical instruction from Simon Mayr, a German composer of internationally successful operas who had become maestro di cappella at Bergamo's principal church in 1802.

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Gaspare Spontini
Gaspare Luigi Pacifico Spontini (14 November 1774 – 24 January 1851) was an Italian opera composer and conductor, extremely celebrated in his time, though largely forgotten after his death.
Born in Maiolati in the province of Ancona, now Maiolati Spontini, he spent most of his career in Paris and Berlin, but returned to his place of birth at the end of his life. During the first two decades of the 19th century, Spontini was an important figure in French opera. In his more than twenty operas, Spontini strove to adapt Gluck's classical tragédie lyrique to the contemporary taste for melodrama, for grander spectacle (in Fernand Cortez for example), for enriched orchestral timbre, and for melodic invention allied to idiomatic expressiveness of words. His single great masterpiece and success was La vestale.
As a youth, Spontini studied at the Conservatorio della Pietà de' Turchini in Naples. In 1803, he went to Paris, where he was appointed court composer in 1805.
In 1807, Spontini wrote La vestale, his best known work. Written with the encouragement of Empress Joséphine, its premiere at the Opéra in Paris established Spontini as one of the greatest Italian composers of his age. His contemporaries Cherubini and Meyerbeer considered it a masterpiece, and later composers like Berlioz and Wagner admired it.

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Germaine de Staël
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein (French pronunciation: [stal]; 22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817), commonly known as Madame de Staël, was a French-speaking Swiss author living in Paris and abroad. She influenced literary tastes in Europe at the turn of the 19th century.
Anne Louise Germaine Necker was born in Paris, France. Her father was the prominent Swiss banker and statesman Jacques Necker, who was the Director of Finance under King Louis XVI of France. Her mother was Suzanne Curchod, almost equally famous for being the early love of Edward Gibbon, being the wife of Necker herself, and being the mistress of one of the most popular salons of Paris. Mother and daughter had little sympathy for each other. Mme Necker, despite her talents, her beauty and her fondness for philosophic society, was strictly decorous, somewhat reserved, and wanted to bring up her daughter with the discipline of her own childhood. Anne Louise was from her earliest years energetic and boisterous. She began very early to write, though not to publish. She was said to have injured her health by excessive study and intellectual excitement. But in reading all the accounts of Mme de Staël's life which come from herself or her intimate friends, it must be carefully remembered that she was the most distinguished and characteristic product of the period of sensibility — the singular fashion of ultra-sentimentalism — which required that both men and women, but especially women, should be always palpitating with excitement, steeped in melancholy, or dissolved in tears. Still, her father's dismissal from the ministry and the consequent removal of the family from the busy life of Paris were probably beneficial to her.

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Giacomo Leopardi
Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒakomo leoˈpardi]; June 29, 1798 – June 14, 1837) was an Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist. Although he lived in a secluded town in the ultra-conservative Papal States, he came in touch with the main thoughts of the Enlightenment, and, by his own literary evolution, created a remarkable and renowned poetic work, related to the Romantic era.
Giacomo Leopardi was born of a local noble family in Recanati, in the Marche, at the time ruled by the papacy. His father, the count Monaldo Leopardi, was a good-hearted man, fond of literature but weak and reactionary, who remained bound to antiquated ideas and prejudices; his mother, the marquise Adelaide Antici Mattei, was a cold and authoritarian woman, obsessed over rebuilding the family's financial fortunes, which had been destroyed by Monaldo's gambling addiction. At home, a rigorous discipline of religion and savings reigned. However, Giacomo's happy childhood, which he spent with his younger brother Carlo Orazio and his sister Paolina, left its mark on the poet, who recorded his experiences in the poem Le Ricordanze.

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Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer (5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.
He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf (now a part of Rüdersdorf), near Berlin with the name Jacob Liebmann Beer. His father was the enormously wealthy financier Jacob Judah Herz Beer (1769-1825) and his much-beloved mother, Amalia Liebmann Meyer Wulff (1767-1854) also came from the wealthy elite. Their other children included the astronomer Wilhelm Beer and the poet Michael Beer.
Beer's first keyboard instructor was Franz Lauska, a pupil of Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and a favoured teacher at the Berlin court. Beer also became one of Muzio Clementi's pupils while Clementi was in Berlin, and old Clementi himself, although he had long given up teaching, was so much struck, during a visit to Berlin, with the promise displayed in the boy's performance as to consent to give Beer lessons. Beer made his public debut in 1801 playing Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto in Berlin. The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reported: 'The amazing keyboard playing of young Bär (a Jewish lad of 9), who carried off the difficult passages and other solo parts with aplomb, and has fine powers of rendition even more rarely found in one of his age, made the concert even more interesting'.

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Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (Italian pronunciation: [dʒoaˈkiːno anˈtɔːnjo rosˈsiːni] (Giovacchino Antonio Rossini in the baptismal certificate) (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces. His best-known operas include the Italian comedies Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola and the French-language epics Moïse et Pharaon and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). A tendency for inspired, song-like melodies is evident throughout his scores, which led to the nickname "The Italian Mozart". Until his retirement in 1829, Rossini had been the most popular opera composer in history.
Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born into a family of musicians in Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of Italy which was then part of the Papal States. His father, Giuseppe, was a horn player and inspector of slaughterhouses. His mother, Anna, was a singer and a baker's daughter. Rossini's parents began his musical training early, and by the age of six he was playing the triangle in his father's musical group.

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Giuseppe Verdi
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."

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Gonçalves Dias
Antônio Gonçalves Dias (Portuguese pronunciation: [ɡõˈsawvis ˈdʒiɐs]; August 10, 1823 — November 3, 1864) was a Brazilian Romantic poet, playwright and linguist. A major exponent of the Brazilian Romanticism and of the literary tradition known as "Indianism", he is famous for writing the poem "Canção do exílio", arguably the most well-known poem of the Brazilian literature, the short epic poem I-Juca-Pirama, and many other nationalist and patriotic poems that would later give him the title of national poet of Brazil. He was also an avid researcher of the Brazilian indigenous languages and folklore.
He is the patron of the 15th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
Antônio Gonçalves Dias was born in Caxias on August 10, 1823, to Portuguese João Manuel Gonçalves Dias and cafuza Vicência Ferreira. After completing his studies in Latin, French and Philosophy, he went in 1838 to Portugal to earn a degree in Law at the University of Coimbra. There, he got in contact with the Romantic ideals and wrote his critically acclaimed poem "Canção do exílio". He graduated in 1845 and returned to Brazil in the same year. He goes to Rio de Janeiro, living there until 1854. There, he wrote the drama Leonor de Mendonça in 1846 and his first poetry book, Primeiros Cantos, in 1847.

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Gustav Schwab
Gustav Benjamin Schwab (19 June 1792 – 4 November 1850) was a German writer, pastor and publisher.
Gustav Schwab was born in Stuttgart, the son of a professor and was introduced to the humanities early in life. After attending Gymnasium Illustre, he studied as a scholar of Tübinger Stift at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, his first two years studying Philology and Philosophy, and thereafter Theology. While at university he established a literary club and became a close friend of Ludwig Uhland, Karl Varnhagen and Justinus Kerner, with whom he published a collection of poems under the title Deutscher Dichterwald.
In the spring of 1813, he made a journey to northern Germany, where he met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Friedrich Rückert, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Adelbert von Chamisso and others. In 1818 he became a high school teacher in Stuttgart, and in 1837 he started work as a pastor in Gomaringen, near Tübingen. In 1841, he moved back to Stuttgart, where he was first pastor and then from 1845 educational counselor for Stuttgart's high school system. In 1847 he received an honorary Doctorate from his old university.

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Gérard de Nerval
Gérard de Nerval (French pronunciation: [ʒeʁaʁ də nɛʁval]) was the nom-de-plume of the French poet, essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie, one of the most essentially Romantic French poets.
Two years after his birth in Paris, his mother died in Silesia while accompanying her husband, a military doctor, a member of Napoleon's Grande Armée. He was brought up by his maternal great-uncle, Antoine Boucher, in the countryside of Valois at Mortefontaine. On the return of his father from war during 1814, he was sent back to Paris. He frequently returned to the countryside of Valois during holidays and later returned to it in imagination in his Chansons et légendes du Valois.
His talent for translation was made manifest in his translation of Goethe's Faust (1828), the work which earned him his reputation; Goethe praised it, and Hector Berlioz later used sections for his legend-symphony La damnation de Faust. Other translations from Goethe ensued; in the 1840s, Nerval's translations introduced Heinrich Heine's poems to French readers of the Revue des deux mondes. During the 1820s at college he became lifelong friends with Théophile Gautier and later joined Alexandre Dumas, père in the Petit Cénacle, in what was an exceedingly bohemian set, which was ultimately to become the Club des Hashischins. Nerval's poetry is characterized by Romantic deism. His passion for the 'spirit world' was matched by a decidedly more negative view of the material one: "This life is a hovel and a place of ill-repute. I'm ashamed that God should see me here." Among his admirers was Victor Hugo.

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Hans Gude
Hans Fredrik Gude (March 13, 1825 – August 17, 1903) was a Norwegian romanticist painter and is considered along with Johan Christian Dahl to be one of Norway's foremost landscape painters. He has been called a mainstay of Norwegian National Romanticism. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting.
Gude's artistic career was not one marked with drastic change and revolution, but was instead a steady progression that slowly reacted to general trends in the artistic world. Gude's early works are of idyllic, sun-drenched Norwegian landscapes which present a romantic, yet still realistic view of his country. Around 1860 Gude began painting seascapes and other coastal subjects. Gude had difficulty with figure drawing initially and so collaborated with Adolph Tidemand in some of his painting, drawing the landscape himself and allowing Tidemand to paint the figures. Later Gude would work specifically on his figures while at Karlsruhe, and so began populating his paintings with them. Gude initially painted primarily with oils in a studio, basing his works on studies he'd done earlier in the field. However, as Gude matured as a painter he began to paint en plein air and espoused the merits of doing so to his students. Gude would go on to work with watercolors later in life as well as gouache in an effort to keep his art constantly fresh and evolving, and although these were never as well received by the public as his oil paintings, his fellow artists greatly admired them.

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Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz (pronounced: [ɛktɔʁ bɛʁˈljoːz]; 11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts (Requiem). Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a conductor, he performed several concerts with more than 1,000 musicians. He also composed around 50 songs. His influence was critical for the further development of Romanticism, especially in composers like Richard Wagner, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and many others.
Hector Berlioz was born in France at La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère, near Grenoble. His father, a respected provincial physician and scholar, was responsible for much of the young Berlioz's education. His father, Louis-Joseph Berlioz, was an atheist, with a liberal outlook; his mother, Marie-Antoinette, was an orthodox Roman Catholic. He had five siblings in all, three of whom did not survive to adulthood. The other two, Nanci and Adèle, remained close to Berlioz throughout his life.

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Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose is distinguished by its satirical wit and irony. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities. Heine spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.
Heine was born in Düsseldorf, Rhineland, into a Jewish family. He was called "Harry" as a child, but became "Heinrich" after his conversion to Christianity in 1825. Heine's father, Samson Heine (1764–1828), was a textile merchant. His mother Peira (known as "Betty"), née van Geldern (1771–1859), was the daughter of a physician. Heinrich was the eldest of the four children; his siblings were Charlotte, Gustav - who later became Baron Heine-Geldern and publisher of the Viennese newspaper Das Fremdenblatt - and Maximilian, later a physician in Saint Petersburg.

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Heinrich Marschner
Heinrich August Marschner (Zittau, 16 August 1795 – Hanover, 16 December 1861), was the most important composer of German Romantic opera between Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner, and is remembered principally for his operas Hans Heiling (1833), Der Vampyr (1828), and Der Templer und die Jüdin (1829). Marschner’s ability to depict supernatural horror by musical means is especially evident in the first two operas as well as in some of his ballads, such as "Die Monduhr" (c. 1839). Next to his operas, his most significant musical contribution is to the Lied, the best of which are comparable with those by Carl Loewe. Marschner also wrote a considerable amount of chamber music, including seven piano trios, as well as unaccompanied male choruses that were very popular in the nineteenth century. While Marschner’s operas strongly influenced Wagner, his chamber music, songs, and his cantata Klänge aus Osten (1842) were admired by Robert Schumann, whose cantata Paradise and the Peri (1843) shows the older composer’s influence. Marschner’s Bagatelles for guitar (1814) have been revived by guitarists, and so have been some of his piano trios. Among his operas, Hans Heiling and especially Der Vampyr have been adapted and revived in recent years with considerable success.

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Heinrich von Kleist
Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist (18 October 1777 – 21 November 1811) was a poet, dramatist, novelist and short story writer. The Kleist Prize, a prestigious prize for German literature, is named after him.
Kleist was born into the von Kleist family in Frankfurt an der Oder in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. After a scanty education, he entered the Prussian Army in 1792, served in the Rhine campaign of 1796, and retired from the service in 1799 with the rank of lieutenant. He studied law and philosophy at the Viadrina University and in 1800 received a subordinate post in the Ministry of Finance at Berlin.
In the following year, Kleist's roving, restless spirit got the better of him, and procuring a lengthened leave of absence he visited Paris and then settled in Switzerland. Here he found congenial friends in Heinrich Zschokke and Ludwig Friedrich August Wieland (d. 1819), son of the poet Christoph Martin Wieland; and to them he read his first drama, a gloomy tragedy, The Schroffenstein Family (1803, originally entitled The Ghonorez Family).

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Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli (German: Johann Heinrich Füssli) (February 7, 1741 – April 17, 1825) was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.
Fuseli was born in Zürich, Switzerland, the second of eighteen children. His father was Johann Caspar Füssli, a painter of portraits and landscapes, and author of Lives of the Helvetic Painters. He intended Henry for the church, and sent him to the Caroline college of Zurich, where he received an excellent classical education. One of his schoolmates there was Johann Kaspar Lavater, with whom he became close friends.
After taking orders in 1761 Fuseli was forced to leave the country as a result of having helped Lavater to expose an unjust magistrate, whose powerful family sought revenge. He first travelled through Germany, and then, in 1765, visited England, where he supported himself for some time by miscellaneous writing. Eventually, he became acquainted with Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom he showed his drawings. Following Sir Joshua's advice he devoted himself wholly to art. In 1770 he made an art-pilgrimage to Italy, where he remained till 1778, changing his name from Füssli to Fuseli, because it was more Italian-sounding.

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Ignaz Moscheles
(Isaac) Ignaz Moscheles (23 May 1794 – 10 March 1870) was a Bohemian composer and piano virtuoso, whose career after his early years was based initially in London, and later at Leipzig, where he succeeded his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as head of the Conservatoire.
Much of what we know about Moscheles's life is derived from the edition of his diaries prepared by his wife, Charlotte, after his death, and published in 1874. This edition also gives lively portraits of his era and of his musical contemporaries. Unfortunately however the diaries themselves have since gone missing, although they may perhaps rematerialise. Another important source is the correspondence between Moscheles and Mendelssohn, preserved at the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds, and published in 1888 by Ignaz's son (and Felix Mendelssohn's god-son), Felix Moscheles.

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Jan Potocki
Count Jan Nepomucen Potocki (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjan pɔˈtɔt͡skʲi]; March 8, 1761 – December 1815) was a Polish nobleman, Polish Army Captain of Engineers, ethnologist, Egyptologist, linguist, traveler, adventurer and popular author of the Enlightenment period, whose life and exploits made him a legendary figure in his homeland. Outside Poland he is known chiefly for his novel, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa.
Jan Nepomucen Potocki was born into the Potocki aristocratic family, that owned vast estates across Poland. He was educated in Geneva and Lausanne, served twice in the Polish Army as a captain of engineers, and spent some time on a galley as novice to the Knights of Malta. His colorful life took him across Europe, Asia and North Africa, where he embroiled himself in political intrigues, flirted with secret societies, contributed to the birth of ethnology — he was one of the first to study the precursors of the Slavic peoples from a linguistic and historical standpoint.
In 1790 he became the first person in Poland to fly in a hot air balloon when he made an ascent over Warsaw with the aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard, an exploit that earned him great public acclaim. He spend some time in France, and upon his return to Poland, he became a known publicist, publishing newspapers and pamphlets, in which he argued for various reforms. He also established in 1788 in Warsaw a publishing house named Drukarnia Wolna (Free Press) as well as the city's first free reading room. His relation with the King Stanisław II August was thorny, as Potocki, while often supportive of the King, on occasion did not shy from his critique. He was highly critical of the Russian ambassador, Otto Magnus von Stackelberg.

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Jan Václav Voříšek
Jan Václav Hugo Voříšek (Czech pronunciation: [jan ˈvaːt͡slaf ˈɦuɡo ˈvor̝iːʃɛk]; Johann Hugo Worzischek, 11 May 1791, Vamberk, Bohemia - 19 November 1825, Vienna, Austria), was a Czech composer of classical music, pianist, and organist.
Voříšek was born in the town of Vamberk where his father was the schoolmaster, choirmaster and organist. A child prodigy, he started to perform publicly in Bohemian towns at the age of nine. His father taught him music, encouraged his playing the piano, helped him get a scholarship to attend the University of Prague where he studied philosophy. He also had lessons in piano and composition from Tomášek. He found it impossible to obtain sufficient work as a musician in Prague, so in 1813 at the age of 22 Voříšek moved to Vienna to study law and, he hoped, to meet Beethoven. In Vienna he was able to greatly improve his piano technique under the guidance of Hummel, but once more failed to gain full time employment as a musician.
Although Voříšek was enthralled by the classical music of Mozart, he was more intrigued by the romanticism of Ludwig van Beethoven.

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Jean Paul
Jean Paul (21 March 1763 – 14 November 1825), born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, was a German Romantic writer, best known for his humorous novels and stories.
Jean Paul was born at Wunsiedel, in the Fichtelgebirge mountains (Bavaria). His father was an organist at Wunsiedel. In 1765 his father became a pastor at Joditz near Hof, and in 1767 at Schwarzenbach, but he died on 25 April 1779, leaving the family in great poverty. After attending the Gymnasium at Hof, Jean Paul went in 1781 to the University of Leipzig. His original intention was to enter his father's profession, but theology did not interest him, and he soon devoted himself wholly to the study of literature. Unable to maintain himself at Leipzig he returned in 1784 to Hof, where he lived with his mother. From 1787 to 1789 he served as a tutor at Töpen, a village near Hof; and from 1790 to 1794 he taught the children of several families in a school he had founded in nearby Schwarzenbach.
Jean Paul began his career as a man of letters with Grönländische Prozesse ("Greenland Lawsuits", published anonymously in Berlin) and Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren ("Selections from the Devil's Papers", signed J. P. F. Hasus), the former of which was issued in 1783-84, the latter in 1789. These works were not received with much favour, and in later life Richter himself had little sympathy for their satirical tone. A spiritual crisis he suffered on 15 November 1790, in which he had a vision of his own death, altered his outlook profoundly. His next book, Die unsichtbare Loge ("The Invisible Lodge"), a romance published in 1793 under the pen-name Jean Paul (in honour of Jean Jacques Rousseau), had all the qualities that were soon to make him famous, and its power was immediately recognized by some of the best critics of the day.

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Johan Christian Dahl
Johan Christian Claussen Dahl (February 24, 1788 – October 14, 1857), often known as J. C. Dahl, was a Norwegian artist who is considered the first great romantic painter in Norway, the founder of the "golden age" of Norwegian painting, and one of the great European artists of all time. He is often described as "the father of Norwegian landscape painting" and is regarded as the first Norwegian Painter ever to reach a level of artistic accomplishment comparable to that attained by the greatest European artists of his day. He was also the first acquire genuine fame and cultural renown abroad. As one critic has put it, "J.C. Dahl occupies a central position in Norwegian artistic life of the first half of the 19th century.
Although Dahl spent much of his life outside of Norway, his love for his country is clear in the motifs he chose for his paintings and in his extraordinary efforts on behalf of Norwegian culture generally. Indeed, if one sets aside his own monumental artistic creations, his other activities on behalf of art, history, and culture would still have guaranteed him a place at the very heart of the artistic and cultural history of Norway. He was, for example, a key figure in the founding of the Norwegian National Gallery and of several other major art institutions in Norway, as well as in the preservation of Norwegian stave churches and the restoration of the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim and Håkonshallen in Bergen.

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John Clare
John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet, the son of a farm labourer, who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption. His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late 20th century and he is often now considered to be among the most important 19th-century poets. His biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self".
Clare was born in Helpston, six miles to the north of the city of Peterborough. In his life time, the village was in the Soke of Peterborough in Northamptonshire and his memorial calls him "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet". Helpston now lies in the Peterborough unitary authority of Cambridgeshire.
He became an agricultural labourer while still a child; however, he attended school in Glinton church until he was twelve. In his early adult years, Clare became a pot-boy in the Blue Bell public house and fell in love with Mary Joyce; but her father, a prosperous farmer, forbade her to meet him. Subsequently he was a gardener at Burghley House. He enlisted in the militia, tried camp life with Gypsies, and worked in Pickworth as a lime burner in 1817. In the following year he was obliged to accept parish relief. Malnutrition stemming from childhood may be the main culprit behind his 5-foot stature and may have contributed to his poor physical health in later life.^{[citation needed]}

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John Constable
John Constable (11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection. "I should paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, "painting is but another word for feeling".
His most famous paintings include Dedham Vale of 1802 and The Hay Wain of 1821. Although his paintings are now among the most popular and valuable in British art, he was never financially successful and did not become a member of the establishment until he was elected to the Royal Academy at the age of 52. He sold more paintings in France than in his native England.
John Constable was born in East Bergholt, a village on the River Stour in Suffolk, to Golding and Ann (Watts) Constable. His father was a wealthy corn merchant, owner of Flatford Mill in East Bergholt and, later, Dedham Mill in Essex. Golding Constable also owned his own small ship, The Telegraph, which he moored at Mistley on the Stour estuary and used to transport corn to London. He was a cousin of the London tea merchant, Abram Newman. Although Constable was his parents' second son, his older brother was mentally handicapped and so John was expected to succeed his father in the business, and after a brief period at a boarding school in Lavenham, he was enrolled in a day school in Dedham. Constable worked in the corn business after leaving school, but his younger brother Abram eventually took over the running of the mills.

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John Keats
John Keats ( /ˈkiːts/; 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of romantic poets along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work only having been in publication for four years before his death.
Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his life, his reputation grew after his death, so that by the end of the 19th century he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of later poets and writers. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats was the most significant literary experience of his life.
The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analyzed in English literature.
John Keats was born on 31 October 1795 to Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats. Keats and his family seemed to have marked his birthday on 29 October, however baptism records give the birth date as the 31st. He was the eldest of four surviving children; George (1797–1841), Thomas (1799–1818) and Frances Mary "Fanny" (1803–1889). Another son was lost in infancy. John was born in central London although there is no clear evidence of the exact location. His father first worked as a hostler at the stables attached to the Swan and Hoop inn, an establishment he later managed and where the growing family lived for some years. Keats believed that he was born at the inn, a birthplace of humble origins, but there is no evidence to support this. The Keats at the Globe pub now occupies the site, a few yards from modern day Moorgate station. He was baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate and sent to a local dame school as a child.

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José de Espronceda
José Ignacio Javier Oriol Encarnación de Espronceda y Delgado (25 March 1808 — 23 May 1842) was a famous Romantic Spanish poet.
Espronceda was born in Almendralejo, at the Province of Badajoz. As a youth, he studied at the Colegio San Mateo at Madrid, having Alberto Lista as a teacher. When he was 15 years old, he formed a secret society named "Los Numantinos" alongside his friends Ventura de la Vega and Patricio de la Escosura, conspiring against Ferdinand VII and intending to avenge the death of Rafael del Riego. For this, he was imprisoned in a monastery and exiled. Afterward, he left Spain and lived in Lisbon, Belgium, France, England and Holland. On his return to Spain in 1833, he became active in the extreme left-wing of Spanish political culture. Espronceda is also known for his affair with Teresa Mancha, for whom he wrote "Canto a Teresa" (from El diablo mundo). He later went to the Malay Peninsula and helped build the Dutch colonies there. He died of diphtheria in 1842.
Having been inspired to a literary career by his teacher Alberto Lista, Espronceda began to write the historical poem El Pelayo during his stay in the monastery. The poem was never completed. Later he wrote the novel Sancho Saldaña. His other important works include El estudiante de Salamanca and El Diablo Mundo, long lyric poems, the latter remained unfinished. Also important were A Jarifa en una orgía, El verdugo, El canto del cosaco, La canción del pirata and Himno al sol. Many of his works display the tendencies of Romanticism, and along with José Zorilla he is considered Spain's most important Romantic poet, as well as the most rebellious.

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José Zorrilla
José Zorrilla y Moral (Spanish pronunciation: [xoˈse θoˈriʎa]; 21 February 1817 – 23 January 1893), was a Spanish Romantic poet and dramatist.
He was born in Valladolid to a magistrate in whom Ferdinand VII placed special confidence,. He was educated by the Jesuits at the Real Seminario de Nobles in Madrid, wrote verses when he was twelve, became an enthusiastic admirer of Walter Scott and Chateaubriand, and took part in the school performances of plays by Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca.
In 1833 he was sent to study law at the University of Toledo, but after a year of idleness, he fled to Madrid, where he horrified the friends of his absolutist father by making violent speeches and by founding a newspaper which was promptly suppressed by the government. He narrowly escaped transportation to the Philippines, and passed the next few years in poverty.
The death of the satirist Mariano José de Larra brought Zorrilla into notice. His elegiac poem, read at Larra's funeral in February 1837, introduced him to the leading men of letters. In 1837 he published a book of verses, mostly imitations of Alphonse de Lamartine and Victor Hugo, which was so favourably received that he printed six more volumes within three years.

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Juliusz Słowacki
Juliusz Słowacki (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjuljuʂ swɔˈvat͡ski]; 4 September 1809 – 3 April 1849) was a Polish Romantic poet. He is considered one of the "Three Bards" of Polish literature — a major figure in the Polish Romantic period, and the father of modern Polish drama. His works often feature elements of Slavic pagan traditions, Polish history, mysticism and orientalism. His style includes the employment of neologisms and irony. His primary genre was the drama, and secondly, lyric poetry. His most popular works include the dramas Kordian and Balladyna and the poem Beniowski.
Słowacki spent his youth in Stolen Lands, in Kremenets (Polish: Krzemieniec) (now Ukraine) and Vilnius (Polish: Wilno) (now Lithuania). He briefly worked for the government of the Kingdom of Poland. During the November 1830 Uprising, he was a courier for the Polish revolutionary government. When the uprising ended in defeat, he found himself abroad and thereafter, like many compatriots, lived the life of an émigré. He settled briefly in Paris, France, and later in Geneva, Switzerland. He also traveled through Italy, Greece and the Middle East. Eventually he returned to Paris, where he spent the last decade of his life. He briefly returned to Poland when another uprising broke out during the Spring of Nations (1848).

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Karel Hynek Mácha
Karel Hynek Mácha (Czech pronunciation: [ˈkarɛl ˈɦɪnɛk ˈmaːxa]) (16 November 1810 – 6 November 1836) was a Czech romantic poet.
Mácha grew up in Prague, the son of a foreman at a mill. He learned Latin and German in school. He went on to study law at Prague University; during that time he also became involved in theatre (as an actor he first appeared in Jan Nepomuk Štěpánek's drama Czech and German in July 1832 in Benešov), where he met Eleonora Šomková, with whom he had a son out of wedlock. He was fond of travel, enjoying trips into the mountains, and was an avid walker. Eventually he moved to Litoměřice, a quiet town some 60 km from Prague, to prepare for law school exams and to write poetry. Three days before he was to be married to Šomková, just a few weeks after he had begun working as a legal assistant, Mácha, in helping put out a fire, overstrained himself, and died after a short period of illness, due to pneumonia. The day after his death he was expected in Prague to marry his mistress.

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Karl Bryullov
Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (Russian: Карл Па́влович Брюлло́в12 December 1799 - 11 June 1852), also transliterated Briullov or Briuloff and referred to by his friends as "The Great Karl", was a Russian painter. He is regarded as a key figure in transition from the Russian neoclassicism to romanticism.
Karl Bryullov was born on December, 12th (23), 1799 in St.-Petersburg, in a family of the academician, the woodcarver and engraver Pavel Ivanovich Briullo (Brulleau, 1760—1833). He felt drawn to Italy from his early years. Despite his education at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1809–1821), Bryullov never fully embraced the classical style taught by his mentors and promoted by his brother, Alexander Bryullov. After distinguishing himself as a promising and imaginative student and finishing his education, he left Russia for Rome where he worked until 1835 as a portraitist and genre painter, though his fame as an artist came when he began doing historical painting.
His best-known work, The Last Day of Pompeii (1830–1833), is a vast composition compared by Pushkin and Gogol to the best works of Rubens and Van Dyck. It created a sensation in Italy and established Briullov as one of the finest European painters of his day. After completing this work, he triumphantly returned to the Russian capital, where he made many friends among the aristocracy and intellectual elite and obtained a high post in the Imperial Academy of Arts.

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Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among Byron's best-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty, When We Two Parted, and So, we'll go no more a roving, in addition to the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential.
He travelled to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died at 36 years old from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi in Greece.
Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses including huge debts, numerous love affairs, rumours of a scandalous incestuous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile. It has been speculated that he suffered from bipolar I disorder, or manic depression.

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Louis Niedermeyer
Abraham Louis Niedermeyer (27 April 1802 – 14 March 1861) was a composer chiefly of church music but also of a few operas, and a teacher who took over the Ecole Choron, duly renamed École Niedermeyer, a school for the study and practice of church music, where several eminent French musicians studied including Gabriel Fauré and André Messager.
Born in Nyon, Switzerland, Niedermeyer studied piano in Vienna with Ignaz Moscheles and composition with Emanuel Aloys Förster. He studied further in Rome with Vincenzo Fioravanti (1819) and in Naples with Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli. While in Rome, he had the luck to meet Gioachino Rossini, who befriended him and urged the production of some of Niedermeyer's operas. His first opera, Il reo per amore, was put on in Naples in 1820 with some success.
Like Rossini, Niedermeyer settled in Paris (at the age of 21, in 1823); and there, in later years, four more of his operas were staged, though with little success:
Niedermeyer also collaborated with his friend Rossini on the assembly of Robert Bruce, Rossini's third and last pastiche; Niedermeyer provided the all-important French texts with their characteristic tone color and harmonies.

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Louise Bertin
Louise-Angélique Bertin (Les Roches, Essonne, 15 January 1805 – Paris, 26 April 1877) was a French composer and poet.
Louise Bertin lived her entire life in France. Her father, Louis-François Bertin, and also her brother later on, were the editors of Journal des débats, an influential newspaper. As encouraged by her family, Bertin pursued music. She received lessons from François-Joseph Fétis, who directed a private family performance of Guy Mannering, the first opera that Bertin ever composed, in 1825. This opera, never formally produced, took its story line from the book of the same name, written by Sir Walter Scott. Two years later, Bertin's second opera, Le Loup-garou, was produced at the Opéra-Comique.
At the age of 21, Bertin began working on an opera semiseria, based on Goethe's Faust. A performance of the completed opera was scheduled for 1830. However, due to many unforeseen complications, Fausto did not actually reach the stage until a full year later. It was not well received and only saw three performances.

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Ludwig Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (July 28, 1804, Landshut, Lower Bavaria – September 13, 1872) was a German philosopher and anthropologist. He was the fourth son of the eminent jurist Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, brother of mathematician Karl Wilhelm Feuerbach and uncle of painter Anselm Feuerbach. An associate of Left Hegelian circles, Feuerbach was politically liberal, an atheist and a materialist. Many of his philosophical writings offered a critical analysis of Christianity. His thought was influential in the development of dialectical materialism, where he is often recognized as a bridge between Hegel and Marx.
Feuerbach matriculated in the University of Heidelberg with the intention of pursuing a career in the church.^{[citation needed]} Through the influence of Prof. Karl Daub he was led to an interest in the then predominant philosophy of Hegel and, in spite of his father's opposition, enrolled in the University of Berlin in order to study under the master himself. After 22 years, the Hegelian influence began to slacken. Feuerbach became associated with a group known as the Young Hegelians, alternately known as the Left Hegelians, who synthesized a radical offshoot of Hegelian philosophy, interpreting Hegel's dialectic march of spirit through history to mean that existing Western culture and institutional forms—and, in particular, Christianity—would be superseded. "Theology," he wrote to a friend, "I can bring myself to study no more. I long to take nature to my heart, that nature before whose depth the faint-hearted theologian shrinks back; and with nature man, man in his entire quality." These words are a key to Feuerbach's development. He completed his education at Erlangen, at the Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg with the study of natural science.

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Ludwig Tieck
Johann Ludwig Tieck (May 31, 1773 – April 28, 1853) was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, writer of Novellen, and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Tieck was born in Berlin, the son of a rope-maker. He was educated at the Friedrich Werdersche Gymnasium, where he learned Greek and Latin, like most preparatory schools required. He also began learning Italian at a very young age from a grenadier he became acquainted with. Through this friendship, Tieck was given a firsthand look at the poor, which could be linked to his work as a Romanticist. Later, he attended the universities of Halle, Göttingen and Erlangen. At Göttingen, he studied Shakespeare and Elizabethan drama.
In 1794 he returned to Berlin, and attempted to make a living by writing. He contributed a number of short stories (1795–1798) to the series of Straussfedern, published by the bookseller C. F. Nicolai and originally edited by J. K. A. Musäus, and wrote Abdallah (1796) and a novel in letters, William Lovell (3 vols. 1795–1796).

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Ludwig Uhland
Johann Ludwig Uhland (26 April 1787 – 13 November 1862), was a German poet, philologist and literary historian.
He was born in Tübingen, then Duchy of Württemberg, and studied jurisprudence at the university there, but also took an interest in medieval literature, especially old German and French poetry. Having graduated as a doctor of laws in 1810, he went to Paris for eight months to continue his studies of poetry; and from 1812 to 1814 he worked as a lawyer in Stuttgart, in the bureau of the minister of justice.
He had begun his career as a poet in 1807 and 1808 by contributing ballads and lyrics to Seckendorff's Musenalmanach; and in 1812 and 1813 he wrote poems for Kerner's Poetischer Almanach and Deutscher Dichterwald. In 1815 he collected his poems in a volume entitled Vaterländische Gedichte, which almost immediately secured a wide circle of readers. To almost every new edition he added some fresh poems. His two dramatic works Ernst, Herzog von Schwaben (1818) and Ludwig der Baier (1819) are unimportant in comparison with his Gedichte.

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Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (ⁱ/ˈlʊdvɪɡ væn ˈbeɪt.hoʊvən/; German pronunciation: [ˈluːtvɪç fan ˈbeːt.hoːfən] ( listen); baptized 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers.
Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, Beethoven moved to Vienna in his early 20s, studying with Joseph Haydn and quickly gaining a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. His hearing began to deteriorate in his late twenties, yet he continued to compose, conduct, and perform, even after becoming completely deaf.
Beethoven was the grandson of a musician of Flemish origin named Lodewijk van Beethoven (1712–73) who moved at the age of twenty to Bonn. Lodewijk (Ludwig is the German cognate of Dutch Lodewijk) was employed as a bass singer at the court of the Elector of Cologne, eventually rising to become Kapellmeister (music director). Lodewijk had one son, Johann (1740–1792), who worked as a tenor in the same musical establishment, and gave lessons on piano and violin to supplement his income. Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767; she was the daughter of Johann Heinrich Keverich, who had been the head chef at the court of the Archbishopric of Trier.

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Maria Luisa of Parma
Maria Luisa of Parma (9 December 1751 – 2 January 1819) was Queen consort of Spain from 1788 to 1808 as the wife of King Charles IV of Spain. She was the youngest daughter of Duke Philip of Parma and his wife, Louise-Élisabeth of France, the eldest daughter of King Louis XV.
She was christened Luisa Maria Teresa Ana, but was known as María Luisa. She, her brother, the next Duke, Ferdinand, Duke of Parma and her sister Princess Isabella of Parma, Archduchess of Austria, deceased at the age of 22, were educated there by Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, (Grenoble, 1715 - Parma, 1780), well known French philosopher and member of the French Academy since 1768, a friend of Denis Diderot and Jean Jacques Rousseau. Her French teacher's works, including many of the texts, some 13, he wrote to educate the three Ducal pupils, were edited in 23 volumes in 1798 being reprinted some 3 times before 1822. Further, Parma Duchy marriage connections with the Austrian Emperor's family for her brother Ferdinand, later Duke Ferdinand, and sister Isabella, and improvements in wealth and industry with their father, Duke Philip, had been ensured by the Parma Prime Minister, Léon Guillaume du Tillot, (Bayonne, 1711 - Paris, 1774), exiled from France as too liberal by King Louis XV of France.

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Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.
Mary Godwin's mother died when she was eleven days old; afterwards, she and her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, were raised by her father. When Mary was four, Godwin married his neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont. Godwin provided his daughter with a rich, if informal, education, encouraging her to adhere to his liberal political theories. In 1814, Mary Godwin began a romantic relationship with one of her father’s political followers, the married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Together with Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, they left for France and travelled through Europe; upon their return to England, Mary was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816 after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet.

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Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo (Italian pronunciation: [mikeˈlandʒelo]), was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.
Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time. A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence. His output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo's design, the dome being completed after his death with some modification.

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Mikhail Glinka
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (Russian: Михаи́л Ива́нович Гли́нка) (June 1 [O.S. May 20] 1804 – February 15 [O.S. February 3] 1857), was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country, and is often regarded as the father of Russian classical music. Glinka's compositions were an important influence on future Russian composers, notably the members of The Five, who took Glinka's lead and produced a distinctive Russian style of music.

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Mikhail Lermontov
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (Russian: Михаи́л Ю́рьевич Ле́рмонтов; IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil ˈjurʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈlʲɛrməntəf]; October 15 [O.S. October 3] 1814 – July 27 [O.S. July 15] 1841), a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", became the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837. Lermontov is considered the supreme poet of Russian literature alongside Pushkin and the greatest figure in Russian Romanticism. His influence on later Russian literature is still felt in modern times, not only through his poetry, but also through his prose, which founded the tradition of the Russian psychological novel.
Lermontov was born in Moscow into a respectable noble family of the Tula Oblast, and grew up on the Tarkhany estate in the village of Tarkhany (now Lermontovo) in Penza Oblast. According to legend, his paternal family is descended from the Scottish Earls of Learmont, one of whom settled in Russia in the early 17th century, during the reign of Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov. The legendary Scottish poet Thomas the Rhymer (Thomas Learmonth) is thus claimed as a relative of Lermontov. The only ascertainable genealogical information states that the poet was descended from Yuri (George) Learmont, a Scottish officer in the Polish service who settled in Russia in the middle of 17th century

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Miloš Forman
Jan Tomáš Forman (Czech pronunciation: [ˈjan ˈtomaːʃ ˈforman]; born February 18, 1932), known as Miloš Forman ([ˈmɪloʃ ˈforman], English /ˈmiːloʊʃ ˈfɔərmən/), is a Czech-American director, screenwriter, professor, and an emigrant from Czechoslovakia. Two of his films, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus, are among the most celebrated in the history of film, both gaining him the Academy Award for Best Director. He was also nominated for the same award for The People vs. Larry Flynt. He also won Golden Globe, Cannes, Berlinale, BAFTA, Cesar, David di Donatello, European Film Academy, and Czech Lion awards.
Forman was born in Čáslav, Czechoslovakia (present-day Czech Republic), the son of Anna (née Švábová), who ran a summer hotel, and Rudolf Forman, a professor. His parents were Protestants. During the Nazi occupation a member of the anti-Nazi Underground named Forman's father as a member of the Underground while being interrogated by the Gestapo. His father was arrested for distributing banned books and died in Buchenwald in 1944. His mother died in Auschwitz in 1943. Forman has stated that he did not fully understand what had happened to his parents until he saw footage of the concentration camps when he was 16.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Nathaniel Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, the only judge involved in the Salem witch trials who never repented of his actions. Nathaniel later added a "w" to make his name "Hawthorne" in order to hide this relation. He entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, and graduated in 1825. Hawthorne anonymously published his first work, a novel titled Fanshawe, in 1828. He published several short stories in various periodicals which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. The next year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He worked at a Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to The Wayside in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, and was survived by his wife and their three children.

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Niccolò Paganini
Niccolò (or Nicolò) Paganini (27 October 1782 – 27 May 1840) was an Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. He was one of the most celebrated violin virtuosi of his time, and left his mark as one of the pillars of modern violin technique. His Caprice No. 24 in A minor, Op. 1, is among the best known of his compositions, and has served as an inspiration for many prominent composers.
Niccolò Paganini was born in Genoa, Italy, the third of the six children of Antonio and Teresa (née Bocciardo) Paganini. Paganini's father was an unsuccessful trader, but he managed to supplement his income through playing music on the mandolin. At the age of five, Paganini started learning the mandolin from his father, and moved to the violin by the age of seven. His musical talents were quickly recognized, earning him numerous scholarships for violin lessons. The young Paganini studied under various local violinists, including Giovanni Servetto and Giacomo Costa, but his progress quickly outpaced their abilities. Paganini and his father then traveled to Parma to seek further guidance from Alessandro Rolla. But upon listening to Paganini's playing, Rolla immediately referred him to his own teacher, Ferdinando Paer and, later, Paer's own teacher, Gasparo Ghiretti. Though Paganini did not stay long with Paer or Ghiretti, the two had considerable influence on his composition style.

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Nikolay Karamzin
Nikolay Mikhailovich Karamzin (Russian: Никола́й Миха́йлович Карамзи́н) (12 December [O.S. 1 December] 1766 – 3 June [O.S. 22 May] 1826) was a Russian writer, poet, historian, and critic. He is best remembered for his History of the Russian State, a 12-volume national history.
Karamzin was born in the village of Mikhailovka, in the government of Orenburg on 1 December (old style) 1766. His father was an officer in the Russian army. He was sent to Moscow to study under Swiss-German teacher Johann Matthias Schaden; he later moved to St Petersburg, where he made the acquaintance of Ivan Dmitriev, a Russian poet of some merit, and occupied himself with translating essays by foreign writers into his native language. After residing for some time in St Petersburg he went to Simbirsk, where he lived in retirement until induced to revisit Moscow. There, finding himself in the midst of the society of learned men, he again took to literary work.
In 1789 he resolved to travel, and visited Germany, France, Switzerland and England. On his return he published his Letters of a Russian Traveller, which met with great success. These letters, modelled after Irish-born Poet, Laurence Sterne´s Sentimental Journey, were first printed in the Moscow Journal, which he edited, but were later collected and issued in six volumes (1797–1801).

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Novalis
Novalis (German pronunciation: [noˈvaːlɪs]) was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (May 2, 1772 – March 25, 1801), an author and philosopher of early German Romanticism.
Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg was born in 1772 at Oberwiederstedt manor (now part of Arnstein, Saxony-Anhalt), in the Harz mountains. The family seat was a manorial estate, not simply a stately home. Novalis descended from ancient, Low German nobility. Different lines of the family include such important, influential magistrates and ministry officials as the Prussian chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822). An oil painting and a christening cap commonly assigned to Novalis are his only possessions now extant. In the church in Wiederstedt, he was christened Georg Philipp Friedrich. He spent his childhood on the family estate and used it as the starting point for his travels into the Harz mountains.
Novalis’s father, the estate owner and salt-mine manager Heinrich Ulrich Erasmus Freiherr von Hardenberg (1738–1814), was a strictly pietistic man who had become a member of the Moravian (Herrnhuter) Church. His second marriage was to Auguste Bernhardine von Hardenberg, née Bölzig (1749–1818), who gave birth to eleven children: their second child was Georg Philipp Friedrich, who later named himself Novalis.

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Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, known as Pablo Picasso (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso], 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is widely known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are commonly regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.

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Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley ( /ˈpɜrsi ˈbɪʃ ˈʃɛli/; 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron. The novelist Mary Shelley (née Godwin) was his second wife.
He is most famous for such classic anthology verse works as "Ozymandias", Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud and The Masque of Anarchy, which are among the most popular and critically acclaimed poems in the English language. His major works, however, are long visionary poems which included Queen Mab (later reworked as The Daemon of the World), Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Adonaïs and the unfinished work The Triumph of Life. The Cenci (1819) and Prometheus Unbound (1820) were dramatic plays in five and four acts respectively. Although he has typically been figured as a "reluctant dramatist", he was passionate about the theatre, and his plays continue to be performed today. He wrote the Gothic novels Zastrozzi (1810) and St. Irvyne (1811) and the short prose works "The Assassins" (1814), "The Coliseum" (1817) and "Una Favola" (1819). In 2008, he was credited as the co-author of the novel Frankenstein (1818) in a new edition by the Bodleian Library in Oxford and Random House in the U.S. entitled The Original Frankenstein, edited by Charles E. Robinson.

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Philipp Otto Runge
Philipp Otto Runge (23 July 1777 – 2 December 1810) was a Romantic German painter and draughtsman. He made a late start to his career and died young, nonetheless he is considered among the best German Romantic painters.
Runge was born as the 9th of 11 children of a family of shipbuilders in Wolgast, in Western Pomerania, then under Swedish rule. As a sickly child he often missed school and at an early age learned the art of scissor-cut silhouettes from his mother, practised by him throughout his life. In 1795 he began a commercial apprenticeship at his older brother Daniel's firm in Hamburg. In 1799 Daniel supported Runge financially to begin study of painting under Jens Juel at the Copenhagen Academy. In 1801 he moved to Dresden to continue his studies, where he met Caspar David Friedrich, Ludwig Tieck, and his future wife Pauline Bassenge. He also began extensive study of the writings of the 17th century mystic Jakob Boehme. In 1803, on a visit to Weimar, Runge unexpectedly met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the two formed a friendship based on their common interests in color and art.

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Philipp Veit
Philipp Veit (13 February 1793 – 18 December 1877) was a German Romantic painter. To Veit is due the credit of having been the first to revive the almost forgotten technique of fresco painting.
Veit was born in Berlin, Prussia. He was the son of a banker Simon Veit and his wife Dorothea, daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, who subsequently left him to marry Friedrich Schlegel. Veit received his first art education in Dresden and Vienna. He was strongly influenced by, and joined, the Nazarene movement in Rome, where he worked for some years before moving to Frankfurt.
In Frankfurt, where his most important works are preserved at the Städel, he was active from 1830 to 1843 as director of the art collections and as professor of painting. From 1853 till his death in 1877 he held the post of director of the municipal gallery at Mainz. Like his fellow Nazarenes he was more draughtsman than painter, and though his sense of colour was stronger than that of Overbeck or Cornelius, his works are generally more of the nature of coloured cartoons than of paintings in the modern sense.

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Piotr Michałowski
Piotr Michałowski (July 2, 1800 – June 9, 1855) was a Polish painter of the Romantic period, especially known for his many portraits.
His talent was long underestimated, but he was re-discovered by Pablo Picasso in 1948. When the painter visited Poland, he saw Michałowski's work in the Warsaw National Museum and shouted, "Here, painter!"
The Sukiennice Museum, a division of the National Museum in Kraków, contains a room devoted to Michałowski's work.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".
Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.

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Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( /ˈvɑːɡnər/; German pronunciation: [ˈʁiçaʁt ˈvaːɡnɐ]; 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, conductor, theatre director and polemicist primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as he later called them). Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex texture, rich harmonies and orchestration, and the elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with individual characters, places, ideas or plot elements. Unlike most other opera composers, Wagner wrote both the music and libretto for every one of his stage works. Perhaps the two best-known extracts from his works are the Ride of the Valkyries from the opera Die Walküre, and the Wedding March (Bridal Chorus) from the opera Lohengrin.
Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works such as The Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser which were broadly in the romantic vein of Weber and Meyerbeer, Wagner transformed operatic thought through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"). This would achieve the synthesis of all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts and was announced in a series of essays between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realized this concept most fully in the first half of the monumental four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. However, his thoughts on the relative importance of music and drama were to change again, and he reintroduced some traditional operatic forms into his last few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

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Robert Burns
Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796) (also known as Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as simply The Bard) was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a "light" Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these his political or civil commentary is often at its most blunt.
He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism, and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish Diaspora around the world. Celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature. In 2009 he was chosen as the 'Greatest Scot' by the Scottish public in a vote run by Scottish television channel STV.

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Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law to return to music, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing.
Schumann's published compositions were written exclusively for the piano until 1840; he later composed works for piano and orchestra; many Lieder (songs for voice and piano); four symphonies; an opera; and other orchestral, choral, and chamber works. Works such as Kinderszenen, Album für die Jugend, Blumenstück and Albumblätter are among his most famous. His writings about music appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), a Leipzig-based publication which he jointly founded.

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Samuel Palmer
Samuel Palmer (27 January 1805 – 24 May 1881) was a British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker. He was also a prolific writer. Palmer was a key figure in Romanticism in Britain and produced visionary pastoral paintings.
Palmer, who was born in Newington, London in Surrey Square off the Old Kent Road, was the son of a bookseller and sometime Baptist minister, and was raised by a pious nurse. Palmer painted churches from around age twelve, and first exhibited Turner-inspired works at the Royal Academy at the age of fourteen. He had little formal training, and did not have a formal schooling, although he was educated briefly at Merchant Taylors' School.
Through John Linnell, he met William Blake in 1824. Blake's influence can be seen in the works he produced over the next ten years or so, which are generally reckoned to be his greatest. These works were of landscapes around Shoreham, near Sevenoaks in the west of the county of Kent. He purchased a run-down cottage, nicknamed "Rat Abbey", and it was there that he lived from 1826 to 1835, depicting the area as a demi-paradise, mysterious and visionary, and often shown in sepia shades under moon and star light. There Palmer also associated with the group of Blake-influenced artists known as The Ancients (including George Richmond and Edward Calvert). They were among the few who ever saw the Shoreham paintings since, as a result of attacks by critics in 1825, he only ever opened those early portfolios to selected friends.

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Sigismond Thalberg
Sigismond Thalberg (January 8, 1812 – April 27, 1871) was a composer and one of the most distinguished virtuoso pianists of the 19th century.
Sigismond Thalberg was born in Pâquis near Geneva, Switzerland, on January 8, 1812. According to his birth certificate, he was the son of "Joseph Thalberg" and "Fortunée Stein", both from Frankfurt-am-Main, but the names in the birth certificate are now regarded as fictitious. For reasons of Thalberg's illegitimate birth, during his lifetime it was common use not to call his parents true names. François-Joseph Fétis, in the article "Thalberg" in his Biographie universelle des musiciens (1863), therefore wrote that Thalberg was son of a Prince „M.. D..“ and a Baroness „W...“.
The identity of Thalberg's mother as Baroness Maria Julia Wetzler von Plankenstern was disclosed 1871 by L. R. von Kohlenegg (Poly Henrion) in an article for the paper Ueber Land und Meer and 1882 by Constant von Wurzbach in the eighth volume of his Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Österreich. As excuse for their being indiscreet both authors wrote that the Baroness herself had always admitted that Sigismond Thalberg was her son. She wore a ring on one of her thumbs and told people who had asked her about it, that the ring had been given to her by Thalberg's father after she had given birth to the child. She was born Julia Bydeskuty von Ipp, from a Hungarian family of a lower rank of the nobility. In 1820 she married Baron Alexander Ludwig Wetzler von Plankenstern.

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Spanish nobility
Spanish nobles are persons who possess the legal status of hereditary nobility according to the laws and traditions of the Spanish monarchy. A system of titles and honours of Spain and of the former kingdoms that constitute it comprise the Spanish nobility. Some nobles possess various titles that may be inherited, but the creation and recognition of titles is legally a prerogative of the King of Spain.
Some noble titles and families still exist which have transmitted that status since time immemorial. Some aristocratic families use the nobiliary particle de before their family name. During the rule of General Francisco Franco, some new hereditary titles were conceded to individuals, and the titles granted by the Carlist pretenders were officially recognized.
Despite accession to Spain's throne of Juan Carlos I in 1975, the court of nobles holding positions and offices attached to the royal household was not restored. Noble titleholders are subjected to taxation, whereas under Spain's ancien régime they were exempt. King Juan Carlos has granted new titles to recognize the merits of politicians and artists (see below).

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Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle (23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839).
Born in Grenoble, Isère, he had an unhappy childhood in what he found to be stifling provincial France, disliking his "unimaginative" father and mourning his mother, who had died when he was young. His closest friend was his younger sister, Pauline, with whom he maintained a steady correspondence throughout the first decade of the 19th century.
The military and theatrical worlds of the First French Empire were a revelation to Beyle. He was named an auditor with the Conseil d'État on 3 August 1810, and thereafter took part in the French administration and in the Napoleonic wars in Italy. He travelled extensively in Germany and was part of Napoleon's army in the 1812 invasion of Russia.

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Taras Shevchenko
Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (Ukrainian: Тара́с Григо́рович Шевче́нко, Russian: Тара́с Григо́рьевич Шевче́нко, Taras Grigoryevich Shevchenko), ( March 9 [O.S. February 25] 1814 – March 10 [O.S. February 26] 1861) was a Ukrainian poet, artist and humanist. His literary heritage is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and, to a large extent, the modern Ukrainian language. Shevchenko also wrote in Russian and left many masterpieces as a painter and an illustrator.
Born into a serf family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko (1782? - 1825) and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko (Boiko) (1782? - August 6, 1823) in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine) Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven. He was taught to read by a village precentor, and loved to draw at every opportunity. Shevchenko went as a household servant with his Russian aristocrat lord Pavel Engelhardt to Vilnius (1828–31) and then to Saint Petersburg.

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Théodore Géricault
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault (26 September 1791 – 26 January 1824) was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings. Although he died young, he became one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement.
Born in Rouen, France, Géricault was educated in the tradition of English sporting art by Carle Vernet and classical figure composition by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, a rigorous classicist who disapproved of his student's impulsive temperament yet recognized his talent. Géricault soon left the classroom, choosing to study at the Louvre instead, where (from 1810 to 1815) he copied from paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Titian, Diego Velázquez, and Rembrandt. During this period at the Louvre he discovered a vitality he found lacking in the prevailing school of Neoclassicism. Much of his time was spent in Versailles, where he found the stables of the palace open to him, and where he gained his knowledge of the anatomy and action of horses.

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Théophile Gautier
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier (pronounced: [pjɛʁ ʒyl teofil ɡotje]; August 30, 1811 – October 23, 1872) was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic.
While Gautier was an ardent defender of Romanticism, his work is difficult to classify and remains a point of reference for many subsequent literary traditions such as Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence and Modernism. He was widely esteemed by writers as diverse as Balzac, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Proust and Oscar Wilde.
Gautier was born on August 30, 1811, in Tarbes, capital of Hautes-Pyrénées département in southwestern France. His father, Pierre Gautier, was a fairly cultured minor government official and his mother was Antoinette-Adelaïde Concarde. The family moved to Paris in 1814, taking up residence in the ancient Marais district.
Gautier's education commenced at the prestigious Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris (fellow alumni include Voltaire and Charles Baudelaire), which he attended for three months before being brought home due to illness. Although he completed the remainder of his education at Collège Charlemagne (alumni include Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve), Gautier's most significant instruction came from his father, who prompted him to become a Latin scholar by age 18.

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Ugo Foscolo
Ugo Foscolo (Italian pronunciation: [ˈuɡo ˈfoskolo]; 6 February 1778 – 10 September 1827), born Niccolò Foscolo, was an Italian writer, revolutionary and poet.
Foscolo was born on the Ionian island of Zakynthos. His father was Andrea Foscolo, an impoverished Venetian nobleman, and his mother Diamantina Spathis was Greek.
In 1788, on the death of his father, who worked as a physician in Spalato, today Croatia (Split), the family removed to Venice, and at the University of Padua Foscolo completed the studies begun at the Dalmatian grammar school.
Amongst his Paduan teachers was the abbé Cesarotti, whose version of Ossian had made that work highly popular in Italy, and who influenced Foscolo's literary tastes; he knew both modern and Ancient Greek. His literary ambition revealed itself by the appearance in 1797 of his tragedy Tieste--a production which obtained a certain degree of success.
Foscolo, who, for causes not clearly explained, had changed his Christian name Niccolò to that of Ugo, now began to take an active part in the stormy political discussions which the fall of the republic of Venice had provoked. He was a prominent member of the national committees, and addressed an ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, expecting Napoleon to overthrow the Venetian oligarchy and create a free republic.

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Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky (Russian: Васи́лий Андре́евич Жуко́вский; IPA: [vɐˈsʲilʲɪj ɐˈndrʲejɪvʲɪtɕ ʐʊˈkofskʲɪj]; February 9 [O.S. January 29] 1783 – April 24 [O.S. April 12] 1852) was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century. He held a high position at the Romanov court as tutor to the Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna and later to her son, the future Tsar-Liberator Alexander II.
Zhukovsky is credited with introducing the Romantic Movement into Russia. The main body of his literary output consists of free translations covering an impressively wide range of poets, from ancients like Ferdowsi and Homer to his contemporaries Goethe, Schiller, Byron, and others. Many of his translations have become classics of Russian literature, arguably better-written and more enduring in Russian than in their original languages.
Zhukovsky was born in the village of Mishenskoe, in Tula Oblast, Russia, the illegitimate son of a landowner named Afanasi Bunin and his Turkish housekeeper Salkha. The Bunin family had a literary bent and some 90 years later produced the Nobel Prize-winning modernist writer Ivan Bunin. For reasons of social propriety, Zhukovsky was formally adopted by a family friend. He kept his adopted surname and patronymic for the rest of his life, even when later ennobled, eventually passing it on to his own children.

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Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo (French pronunciation: [viktɔʁ maʁi yɡo]) (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist^{[citation needed]} and exponent of the Romantic movement in France.
In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (also known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame).
Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism^{[citation needed]}, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He is buried in the Panthéon.
Hugo was the third, illegitimate, son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo (1774–1828) and Sophie Trébuchet (1772–1821); his brothers were Abel Joseph Hugo (1798–1855) and Eugène Hugo (1800–1837). He was born in 1802 in Besançon (in the region of Franche-Comté) and lived in France for the majority of his life. However, he decided to live in exile as a result of Napoleon III's Coup d'état at the end of 1851.

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Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was a Italian opera composer. A native of Catania in Sicily, his greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi (1830), La sonnambula (1831), Norma (1831), Beatrice di Tenda (1833), and I puritani (1835). Known for his long-flowing melodic lines, for which he was named "the Swan of Catania", Bellini was the quintessential composer of bel canto opera. He died in Puteaux, France at the age of 33, nine months after the premiere of his last opera, I puritani.
Born in Catania, Sicily, Bellini was a child prodigy from a highly musical family and legend has it he could sing an aria of Valentino Fioravanti at eighteen months. He began studying music theory at two, the piano at three, and by the age of five could apparently play well. Bellini's first five pieces were composed when he was just six years old. Regardless of the veracity of these claims, it is certain that Bellini grew up in a musical household and that a career as a musician was never in doubt.

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Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832) was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time.
Scott was the first English-language author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers in Europe, Australia, and North America. His novels and poetry are still read, and many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor.
Born in College Wynd in the Old Town of Edinburgh in 1771, the son of a solicitor, Scott survived a childhood bout of polio in 1773 that left him lame. To cure his lameness he was sent in 1773 to live in the rural Borders region at his paternal grandparents' farm at Sandyknowe, adjacent to the ruin of Smailholm Tower, the earlier family home. Here he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny, and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that characterised much of his work. In January 1775 he returned to Edinburgh, and that summer went with his aunt Jenny to take spa treatment at Bath in England, where they lived at 6 South Parade. In the winter of 1776 he went back to Sandyknowe, with another attempt at a water cure at Prestonpans during the following summer.

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Washington Irving
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Muhammad, and several histories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as Christopher Columbus, the Moors, and the Alhambra. Irving also served as the U.S. ambassador to Spain from 1842 to 1846.
He made his literary debut in 1802 with a series of observational letters to the Morning Chronicle, written under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. After moving to England for the family business in 1815, he achieved international fame with the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in 1819. He continued to publish regularly—and almost always successfully—throughout his life, and completed a five-volume biography of George Washington just eight months before his death, at age 76, in Tarrytown, New York.

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Wikipedia Persondata
wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata
Wilhelm Hauff
Wilhelm Hauff (29 November 1802 – 18 November 1827) was a German poet and novelist.
Hauff was born in Stuttgart, the son of August Friedrich Hauff, a secretary in the ministry of foreign affairs, and Hedwig Wilhelmine Elsaesser Hauff. He was the second of four children.
Young Hauff lost his father when he was seven years old, and his early education was practically self-gained in the library of his maternal grandfather at Tübingen, where his mother had moved after the death of her husband. In 1818 he was sent to the Klosterschule at Blaubeuren, and in 1820 began to study at the University of Tübingen. In four years he completed his philosophical and theological studies at the Tübinger Stift.
On leaving the university, Hauff became tutor to the children of the famous Württemberg minister of war, General Baron Ernst Eugen von Hugel (1774–1849), and for them wrote his Märchen (fairy tales), which he published in his Märchen almanach auf das Jahr 1826 (Fairytale Almanac of 1826). Some of these stories are very popular in German-speaking countries to this day, such as Der kleine Muck (The Story of Little Muck), Kalif Storch (Caliph Stork) and Die Geschichte von dem Gespensterschiff (The Tale of the Ghost Ship) — all set in the Orient; as well as Der Zwerg Nase (Little Longnose), Das kalte Herz (The Cold Heart) and Das Wirtshaus im Spessart (The Inn in the Spessart), set in Germany.

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William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". Although he lived in London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself".
Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic", for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England – indeed, to all forms of organised religion – Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Rossetti characterised Blake as a "glorious luminary," and as "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors".

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William Hogarth
William Hogarth (10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects". Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian."
William Hogarth was born at Bartholomew Close in London to Richard Hogarth, a poor Latin school teacher and textbook writer, and Anne Gibbons. In his youth he was apprenticed to the engraver Ellis Gamble in Leicester Fields, where he learned to engrave trade cards and similar products. Young Hogarth also took a lively interest in the street life of the metropolis and the London fairs, and amused himself by sketching the characters he saw. Around the same time, his father, who had opened an unsuccessful Latin-speaking coffee house at St John's Gate, was imprisoned for debt in Fleet Prison for five years. Hogarth never spoke of his father's imprisonment.^{[citation needed]}

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William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.
Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.
The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland—part of the scenic region in northwest England, the Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer; John, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805 when the ship of which he was Master, the Earl of Abergavenny, was wrecked off the south coast of England; and Christopher, the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Their father was a legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the small town. Wordsworth, as with his siblings, had little involvement with their father, and they would be distant from him until his death in 1783.

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Zygmunt Krasiński
Count Napoleon Stanisław Adam Ludwig Zygmunt Krasiński (Polish pronunciation: [ˈzɨɡmunt kraˈɕiɲskʲi]; Paris, France, 19 February 1812 – 23 February 1859, Paris, France), a Polish count, is traditionally ranked with Mickiewicz and Słowacki as one of Poland's Three National Bards — the trio of great Romantic poets who influenced national consciousness during the period of Poland's political bondage.
Krasiński was the son of a general, Count Wincenty Krasiński, of the aristocratic Krasiński family. He studied law at Warsaw University and in Geneva, where he met Adam Mickiewicz.
Krasiński was more sociopolitically conservative than the other two poets. He published much of his work anonymously.
He is best known for his philosophical Messianist ideas. His drama, Nie-boska Komedia (The Un-Divine Comedy, 1835), portrays the tragedy of an old-world aristocracy defeated by a new order of communism and democracy, and is a poetic prophecy of class conflict and of Russia's October Revolution (see also Okopy Świętej Trójcy); and his drama, Irydion (1836), deals, in the context of Christian ethics, with the struggle of a subjugated nation against its oppressor.

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Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet (US /mæˈneɪ/ or UK /ˈmæneɪ/; French: [edwaʁ manɛ]; 1832–1883) was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) and Olympia, engendered great controversy and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. Today, these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of modern art.
Born into an upper class household with strong political connections, Manet rejected the future originally envisioned for him, and became engrossed in the world of painting. He married Suzanne Leenhoff in 1863. The last 20 years of Manet's life saw him form bonds with other great artists of the time, and develop his own style that would be heralded as innovative and serve as a major influence for future painters.
Édouard Manet was born in Paris on 23 January 1832, to an affluent and well connected family. His mother, Eugénie-Desirée Fournier, was the daughter of a diplomat and goddaughter of the Swedish crown prince, Charles Bernadotte, from whom the current Swedish monarchs are descended. His father, Auguste Manet, was a French judge who expected Édouard to pursue a career in law. His uncle, Edmond Fournier, encouraged him to pursue painting and often took young Manet to the Louvre. In 1841 he enrolled at secondary school, the Collège Rollin. In 1845, at the advice of his uncle, Manet enrolled in a special course of drawing where he met Antonin Proust, future Minister of Fine Arts and subsequent life-long friend.

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Étienne Méhul
Étienne Nicolas Méhul (22 June 1763 – 18 October 1817) was a French composer, "the most important opera composer in France during the Revolution." He was also the first composer to be called a "Romantic".
Méhul was born at Givet in Ardennes to Jean-François Méhul, a wine merchant, and his wife Marie-Cécile (née Keuly). His first music lessons came from a blind local organist, but he had innate aptitude and was sent to study with a German musician and organist, Wilhelm Hanser, at the monastery of Lavaldieu, a few miles from Givet. Here Méhul developed his lifelong love of flowers.
In 1778 or 1779 he went to Paris and began to study with Jean-Frédéric Edelmann, a harpsichord player and friend of Méhul's idol Christoph Willibald von Gluck. Méhul's first published composition was a book of piano pieces in 1783. He also arranged airs from popular operas and by the late 1780s he had begun to think about an operatic career for himself.
In 1787, the writer Valadier offered Méhul one of his libretti, Cora, which had been rejected by Gluck in 1785. The Académie royale de musique (the Paris Opéra put Méhul's work, under the title Alonzo et Cora, into rehearsal in June 1789. However, the rehearsals were abandoned on 8 August, probably because the Opéra had been suffering severe financial difficulties throughout the 1780s, and the opera was not premiered until 1791. In the meantime, Méhul found an ideal collaborator in the librettist François-Benoît Hoffman, who provided the words to the first of Méhul's operas to be performed, Euphrosine. Its premiere in 1790 was an immense success and marked the composer out as a new talent. It was also the start of his long relationship with the Comédie Italienne theatre (soon to be renamed the Opéra-Comique).

wn.com/Étienne_Méhul

The Style of Francisco Goya

A short film on the life and artistic style of Spanish artist Francisco Goya. This piece w...

published: 22 Nov 2006

author: Matt Chewiwie

Francisco Goya (1746-1828)

Francisco Goya (1746-1828) Music "Bolero". Dead Can Dance....

published: 10 May 2007

author: freddiefedowitz

Francisco Goya

Ravel - Pavana per un'Infanta defunta...

published: 18 Jul 2007

author: Alcyna

Favorite Artists: Francisco Goya

The Spanish painter and print maker Francisco Goya was born in Aragon in 1746. His family ...

published: 20 May 2008

author: bestjonbon

FRANCISCO GOYA - The Black Paintings - Music by Perry Frank

Buy this song on Bandcamp: perryfrank.bandcamp.com Buy this song on Vibedeck: vibedeck.com...

published: 21 Jan 2011

author: PerryFrankChannel2

Top Twenty Francisco Goya Paintings

Here is my take on the top twenty Fransico Goya Paintings... enjoy....

published: 29 Dec 2008

author: King110324

francisco goya

francisco goya...

published: 18 Feb 2008

author: juampawind

francisco goya maui

windsurfing is great! music: Refused- Summerholidays...

published: 11 May 2008

author: juampawind

Francisco de Goya

Francisco de Goya...

published: 12 Jun 2012

author: Dionysos Ditirambo

Goya's Ghosts (2006) - Official Trailer

The famous painter Francisco Goya becomes involved with the Spanish Inquisition when his m...

published: 29 Jul 2011

author: thecultbox

Francisco Goya paintings of women

Paintings of women by Goya with music by Barry Mitchell performed by the Locrian Ensemble....

published: 17 Feb 2009

author: Barry Mitchell

Goya, pintor de luces y sombras

www.artehistoria.com Quizá la figura de Goya sea tan atrayente por lo que supone de ruptur...

published: 30 Jun 2008

author: artehistoriacom

A Tribute to Francisco Goya

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (March 30, 1746 April 16, 1828) was an Aragonese Spanis...

published: 28 Sep 2008

author: crossbonez182

biografie-Francisco Goya -

...

published: 01 Jun 2012

author: 61Gemelli

Spain

Taken in the central highlands of Spain, the autonomous regions Castilla-La-Mancha and Cas...

published: 07 Apr 2011

author: Ben

Juan con miedo (Fearful John) - Cortometraje

Cortometraje producido en 2010 por Yacaré Films S.L., dirigido por Daniel Romero y protago...

published: 20 Nov 2010

author: Daniel Romero

Francisco Goya at Hookipa 20 Okt 2010

A short movie of Francisco Goya. He is in my opinion among the top 10 role models into to ...

published: 21 Oct 2010

author: Tormod Happysurfer

Francisco Goya

A preview of one of our great NowYouKnowAbout Artists films!...

published: 02 Nov 2009

author: NowYouKnowAbout

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photo: AP / Mohamed Sheikh Nor

File - Al-Shabaab fighters display weapons as they conduct military exercises in northern Mogadishu, Somalia,Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010.

French secret service hostage and soldiers killed in Somali rescue mission

The Guardian

12 Jan 2013

Helicopter raid fails to rescue agent 'Denis Allex' from Islamist group al-Shabaab, as French combat pilot killed in Mali. French secret service hostage 'Denis Allex' pictured in Somalia in October 2012. Photograph. SITE Monitoring Service/AFP/Getty Images. A French hostage and two French soldiers have been killed during a failed secret service rescue mission in Somalia ... The group said it had also captured a wounded French commando ... ....(size: 4.7Kb)

photo: US Navy / MCS2 Gretchen Albrecht

File - Electronics Technician 3rd Class Jackie McBride hands a box to Electronics Technician 2nd Class Shawn Cutter as they attempt to clear a street in Staten Island, New York that was leveled during Hurricane Sandy, Nov. 9, 2012.

Now no one can deny that the world is getting warmer

The Observer

13 Jan 2013

The draft version of the US National Climate Assessment, released on Friday, makes remarkable reading – not just for Americans but for all humanity. Put together by a special panel of more than 240 scientists, the federally commissioned report reveals that the US is already reeling under the impact of global warming ... Nor is there any doubt about the cause of these rising temperatures ... A bitter struggle lies ahead ... Sender's name ... ....(size: 6.2Kb)

photo: AP / Remy de la Mauviniere

One of the three bodies of the killed Kurdish women is taken out of the building in Paris, Thursday Jan. 10, 2012.

Kurdish assassination mystery grips Paris

France24

11 Jan 2013

The executions of three Kurdish women in Paris have sparked questions over the motives for the high-level assassinations. FRANCE 24 asks Kendal Nezan, president of the Kurdish Institute in Paris, for his views on the mysterious murders. By Ségolène ALLEMANDOU (text).   ... Sakine Cansiz, Fidan Dogan and Leyla Soylemez were found shot dead inside the Kurdish Institute of Paris. Screen grab of Firatnews ... France 24 ... Kendel Nezan ... FRANCE 24 ... ....(size: 9.7Kb)

photo: AP / Arshad Butt

Pakistani police officers and local residents gather at the site of a bomb blast that targeted paramilitary soldiers in a commercial area in Quetta, Pakistan, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than 40 others, according to police, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2013.

Bombings kill 115 in Pakistan

Newsday

11 Jan 2013

QUETTA, Pakistan -- A series of bombings killed 115 people in Pakistan yesterday, including 81 who died in a sectarian attack on a billiard hall in the southwest city of Quetta, officials said. The blasts punctuated one of the deadliest days in recent years in Pakistan, where the government faces a bloody insurgency by militants in the northwest and Baluch militants in the southwest ... No group claimed responsibility for the attack.. . .....(size: 7.7Kb)

photo: AP / NSW Rural Fire Service, Kerry Lawrence

In this Jan. 11, 2013 photo provided by NSW Rural Fire Service, an aircrane dumps water on a fire near Tallong, Australia.

Bushfires rage on in Australia 'helped' by climate change

BBC News

12 Jan 2013

Australian firefighters are continuing to tackle more than 100 bushfires, which have gutted houses and thousands of hectares of land. Officials say temperatures are lower than feared, but gusty winds are making it hard to contain the blazes in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. Six people have been treated for heat exposure, but nobody has died ... ....(size: 1.8Kb)

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Evan S. Connell | 1924-2013: Acclaimed novelist covered array of topics

The Columbus Dispatch

12 Jan 2013

Subscribe to The Dispatch. Sign up for home delivery of The Columbus Dispatch and find out What's In It for You.  ... ... As a nonfiction writer, Connell authored a biography of Spanish painter Francisco Goya in 2004 . ....(size: 2.1Kb)

ACCLAIMED AUTHOR WROTE ‘MRS. BRIDGE,’ BEST-SELLER ON CUSTER’S LAST STAND

U~T San Diego

12 Jan 2013

SANTA FE, N.M. — Evan S ... Connell’s Depression-era Kansas City in the twin novels “Mrs. Bridge” and “Mr. Bridge” was made into a movie starring husband and wife movie actors, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward ... He was 88, his niece said ... no funeral ... Connell was the author of 19 books, including two book-length poems, a biography of Spanish painter Francisco Goya and a historically detailed novel about the Crusades, “Deus Lo Volt!” ... Col ... ....(size: 3.5Kb)

Author Evan S. Connell, noted for book on Custer

Buffalo News

11 Jan 2013

SANTA FE, N.M. – Evan S ... Connell’s Depression-era Kansas City in the twin novels “Mrs. Bridge” and “Mr ... Connell was the author of 19 books, including two book-length poems, a biography of Spanish painter Francisco Goya and a historically detailed novel about the Crusades, “Deus Lo Volt!” ... He lived for more than three decades in San Francisco before moving to New Mexico in 1989 ... ....(size: 2.1Kb)

Acclaimed writer Evan S. Connell has died at 88

The Columbus Dispatch

11 Jan 2013

Subscribe to The Dispatch ... Already a subscriber?. Enroll in EZPay and get a free gift! ... Connell was the author of 19 books, including two book-length poems, a biography of Spanish painter Francisco Goya and a historically detailed novel about the Crusades, "Deus Lo Volt!" ... He once worked as an interviewer in an unemployment office in the San Francisco area, where he lived for more than three decades before moving to New Mexico in 1989 ... ....(size: 6.0Kb)

Best-selling author Evan S. Connell dies at 88

Detroit Free Press

11 Jan 2013

SANTA FE, N.M. Evan S ... Connell's Depression-era Kansas City in the twin novels "Mrs ... Connell was the author of 19 books, including two book-length poems, a biography of Spanish painter Francisco Goya and a historically detailed novel about the Crusades, "Deus Lo Volt!" ... He once worked as an interviewer in an unemployment office in the San Francisco area, where he lived for more than three decades before moving to New Mexico in 1989 ... ....(size: 5.3Kb)

Acclaimed writer Evan S. Connell dies at 88

The Associated Press

11 Jan 2013

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- Evan S ... Bridge" and "Mr ... He was 88, his niece said ... no funeral ... Connell was the author of 19 books, including two book-length poems, a biography of Spanish painter Francisco Goya and a historically detailed novel about the Crusades, "Deus Lo Volt!" ... Col ... He once worked as an interviewer in an unemployment office in the San Francisco area, where he lived for more than three decades before moving to New Mexico in 1989 ... ....(size: 5.3Kb)

>Acclaimed writer Evan S. Connell dies at 88

Seattle Post

11 Jan 2013

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Evan S ... Bridge" and "Mr ... He was 88, his niece said ... no funeral ... Connell was the author of 19 books, including two book-length poems, a biography of Spanish painter Francisco Goya and a historically detailed novel about the Crusades, "Deus Lo Volt!" ... Col ... He once worked as an interviewer in an unemployment office in the San Francisco area, where he lived for more than three decades before moving to New Mexico in 1989 ... ....(size: 5.2Kb)

Evan S. Connell, acclaimed author of ‘Bridges’ twin novels, ‘Custer’ account, dies at 88

The Washington Post

11 Jan 2013

SANTA FE, N.M. — Evan S. Connell was virtually unknown to the general public, but to critics and students of graduate writing programs, the adventurous author was regarded fondly and often praised for his diversity of interests ... Connell was the author of 19 books, including two book-length poems, a biography of Spanish painter Francisco Goya and a historically detailed novel about the Crusades, “Deus Lo Volt!” ... Col ... ....(size: 3.8Kb)

Evan S. Connell, author of “Mrs. Bridge” and “Mr. Bridge,” dies at age 88

The Washington Post

11 Jan 2013

Evan S ... Connell composed his 1984 study of George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn, a biography of Spanish painter Francisco Goya (2004) and essays about science, history, religion, exploration and astronomy ... He studied writing at Stanford and Columbia universities, lived in Paris in the early 1950s and later settled in San Francisco, where he held a series of dead-end jobs, including working in an unemployment office....(size: 5.7Kb)

Evan Connell, Novelist of Many Genres, Is Dead at 88

The New York Times

11 Jan 2013

Evan S ... He was 88. Connect With Us on Twitter. Follow @nytimesarts for arts and entertainment news. Arts Twitter List. Critics, Reporters and Editors. A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics ... Mr ... He spent many years in the San Francisco area, where he started writing an essay about Gen ... Four years after that, in 2004, he published a biography of the Spanish painter Francisco Goya ... 52....(size: 10.9Kb)

KC-born author Evan S. Connell dies at 88

Kansas City Star

11 Jan 2013

Evan S. Connell, the Kansas City native who did more than any writer to shape the city’s literary image, died Wednesday at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 88 ... Bridge” and “Mr ... “Mr. and Mrs ... “If I look at ‘Mrs ... 66th St ... In recent years Connell published a historical novel based on his deep research of the Crusades (“Deus Lo Volt”), and a biography of the Spanish painter Francisco Goya....(size: 5.8Kb)

Evan S. Connell, acclaimed author of 'Bridges' twin novels, 'Custer' account, died at 88

Star Tribune

10 Jan 2013

SANTA FE, N.M ... Connell wrote 19 books, including two book-length poems, a biography of Spanish painter Francisco Goya and a historically detailed novel about the Crusades ... Col ... ....(size: 1.0Kb)

Evan S. Connell, acclaimed author of ‘Bridges’ twin novels, ‘Custer’ account, died at 88

The Washington Post

10 Jan 2013

SANTA FE, N.M. — A niece of Evan S ... He was 88 ... Connell wrote 19 books, including two book-length poems, a biography of Spanish painter Francisco Goya and a historically detailed novel about the Crusades ... ....(size: 1.5Kb)

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"Goya" redirects here. For other uses, see Goya (disambiguation).

This name uses Spanish naming customs; the first or paternal family name is Goya and the second or maternal family name is Lucientes.

Francisco Goya
Portrait of Francisco Goya by Vicente López y Portaña (1826). Oil on canvas, 93 × 75 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain
Birth name	Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
Born	(1746-03-30)30 March 1746 Fuendetodos, Aragón, Spain
Died	16 April 1828(1828-04-16) (aged 82) Bordeaux, France
Nationality	Spanish
Field	Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Printmaking,
Training	José Luzán
Movement	Romanticism
Works	La maja desnuda/La maja vestida The Third of May 1808 (1814) Black Paintings

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish pronunciation: [fɾanˈθisko xoˈse ðe ˈɣoʝa i luˈθjentes]; 30 March 1746–16 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era. The subversive and imaginative element in his art, as well as his bold handling of paint, provided a model for the work of later generations of artists, notably Manet, Picasso and Francis Bacon.^[1]. In his honour, Spain's main national film awards are called the Goya Awards.

1 Biography
2 Work
3 Films
4 Notes
5 References
6 Sources
7 External links

Biography [link]

Early years [link]

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, c. 1797, 21.5 cm × 15 cm. One of the most famous prints of the Caprichos

Goya was born in Fuendetodos, Aragón, Spain, in 1746 to José Benito de Goya y Franque and Gracia de Lucientes y Salvador. He spent his childhood in Fuendetodos, where his family lived in a house bearing the family crest of his mother. His father earned his living as a gilder. About 1749, the family bought a house in the city of Zaragoza and some years later moved into it. Goya may have attended school at Escuelas Pias. He formed a close friendship with Martin Zapater at this time, and their correspondence from the 1770s to the 1790s is a valuable source for understanding Goya's early career at the court of Madrid. At age 14, Goya studied under the painter José Luzán. He moved to Madrid where he studied with Anton Raphael Mengs, a painter who was popular with Spanish royalty. He clashed with his master, and his examinations were unsatisfactory. Goya submitted entries for the Royal Academy of Fine Art in 1763 and 1766, but was denied entrance.

He then relocated to Rome, where in 1771 he won second prize in a painting competition organized by the City of Parma. Later that year, he returned to Zaragoza and painted parts of the cupolas of the Basilica of the Pillar (including Adoration of the Name of God), a cycle of frescoes in the monastic church of the Charterhouse of Aula Dei, and the frescoes of the Sobradiel Palace. He studied with Francisco Bayeu y Subías and his painting began to show signs of the delicate tonalities for which he became famous.

La cometa, 1777–1778, one of Goya's tapestry cartoons

Goya married Bayeu's sister Josefa (he nicknamed her "Pepa") on 25 July 1773. This marriage, and Francisco Bayeu's membership of the Royal Academy of Fine Art (from the year 1765) helped Goya to procure work as a painter of designs to be woven by the Royal Tapestry Factory. There, over the course of five years, he designed some 42 patterns, many of which were used to decorate (and insulate) the bare stone walls of El Escorial and the Palacio Real del Pardo, the newly built residences of the Spanish monarchs near Madrid. This brought his artistic talents to the attention of the Spanish monarchs who later would give him access to the royal court. He also painted a canvas for the altar of the Church of San Francisco El Grande in Madrid, which led to his appointment as a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Art.

Mid-career [link]

In 1783, the Count of Floridablanca, a favourite of King Carlos III, commissioned Goya to paint his portrait. He also became friends with Crown Prince Don Luis, and spent two summers with him, painting portraits of both the Infante and his family. During the 1780s, his circle of patrons grew to include the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, whom he painted, the King and other notable people of the kingdom. In 1786, Goya was given a salaried position as painter to Charles III. After the death of Charles III in 1788 and revolution in France in 1789, during the reign of Charles IV, Goya reached his peak of popularity with royalty.^[2]

Charles IV of Spain and His Family, 1800. Théophile Gautier described the figures as looking like "the corner baker and his wife after they won the lottery".^[3]

In 1789 he was made court painter to Charles IV and in 1799 he was appointed First Court Painter with a salary of 50,000 reales and 500 ducats for a coach. He painted the King and the Queen, royal family pictures, portraits of the Prince of the Peace and many other nobles. His portraits are notable for their disinclination to flatter, and in the case of Charles IV of Spain and His Family, the lack of visual diplomacy is remarkable.^[4] Modern interpreters have seen this portrait as satire; it is thought to reveal the corruption present under Charles IV. Under his reign his wife Louisa was thought to have had the real power, which is why she is placed at the center of the group portrait. From the back left of the painting you can see the artist himself looking out at the viewer, and the painting behind the family depicts Lot and his daughters, thus once again echoing the underlying message of corruption and decay.

Goya received orders from many within the Spanish nobility. Among those from whom he procured portrait commissions were Pedro Téllez-Girón, 9th Duke of Osuna and his wife María Josefa Pimentel, 12th Countess-Duchess of Benavente, María del Pilar de Silva, 13th Duchess of Alba (universally known simply as the "Duchess of Alba"), and her husband José María Álvarez de Toledo, 15th Duke of Medina Sidonia, and María Ana de Pontejos y Sandoval, Marchioness of Pontejos.

At some time between late 1792 and early 1793, a serious illness, whose exact nature is not known, left Goya deaf, and he became withdrawn and introspective. During his recuperation, he undertook a series of experimental paintings. His experimental art—that would encompass paintings, drawings as well as a bitter series of aquatinted etchings, published in 1799 under the title Caprichos – was done in parallel to his more official commissions of portraits and religious paintings. In 1798, he painted luminous and airy scenes for the pendentives and cupula of the Real Ermita (Chapel) of San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid. Many place miracles of Saint Anthony of Padua in the midst of contemporary Madrid.

The Third of May 1808, 1814. Oil on canvas, 266 х 345 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid

Later years [link]

French forces invaded Spain in 1808, leading to the Peninsular War of 1808–1814. Goya's involvement with the court of the "Intruder king", Joseph I, the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, is not known; he did paint works for French patrons and sympathisers, but kept neutral during the fighting. After the restoration of the Spanish king, Ferdinand VII, in 1814, Goya denied any involvement with the French. When his wife Josefa died in 1812, he was mentally and emotionally processing the war by painting The Charge of the Mamelukes and The Third of May 1808, and preparing the series of prints later known as The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra). Ferdinand VII returned to Spain in 1814 but relations with Goya were not cordial. He painted portraits of the kings for a variety of organizations, but not for the king himself.

Leocadia Weiss (née Zorrilla, b. 1790)^[5]^[6] the artist's maid, younger by 35 years, and a distant relative,^[7] lived with and cared for Goya after Bayeu's death. She stayed with him in his Quinta del Sordo villa until 1824 with her daughter Rosario.^[8] Leocadia was probably similar in features to Goya's first wife Josefa Bayeu, to the extent that one of his well known portraits bears the cautious title of Josefa Bayeu (or Leocadia Weiss).^[9]

The Milkmaid of Bordeaux, 1825–27, is the third and final Goya portrait which may depict Leocadia Weiss. This might also be of Leocadia's daughter Rosario.^[10] Its colourisation and mood is very similar to the Lecodia "Black Painting".

Not much is known about her beyond her fiery temperament. She was likely related to the Goicoechea family, a wealthy dynasty into which the artist's son, the feckless Javier, had married. It is believed she held liberal political views and was unafraid of expressing them, a fact met with disapproval by Goya's family. It is known that Leocadia had an unhappy marriage with a jeweler, Isideo Weiss, but was separated from him since 1811. Her husband cited "illicit conduct" during the divorce proceedings. She had two children before the marriage dissolved, and bore a third, Rosario, in 1814 when she was 26. Isideo was not the father, and it has often been speculated—although with little firm evidence—that the child belonged to Goya.^[11] There has been much speculation that Goya and Weiss were romantically linked, however, it is more likely the affection between them was sentimental.^[12]

It is not known whether this 1805 Goya portrait is of his wife Josefa Bayeu or of Leocadia Weiss

Goya's works from 1814 to 1819 are mostly commissioned portraits, but also include the altarpiece of Santa Justa and Santa Rufina for the Cathedral of Seville, the print series of La Tauromaquia depicting scenes from bullfighting, and probably the etchings of Los Disparates.

In 1819, with the idea of isolating himself, he bought a country house by the Manzanares river just outside of Madrid. It was known as the Quinta del Sordo (roughly, "House of the Deaf Man", titled after its previous owner and not after Goya himself). There he created the Black Paintings with intense, haunting themes, reflective of the artist's fear of insanity, and his outlook on humanity. Several of these, including Saturn Devouring His Son, were painted directly onto the walls of his dining and sitting rooms.

Goya lost faith in or became threatened by the restored Spanish monarchy's anti-liberal political and social stance and left Spain in May 1824 for Bordeaux and then Paris.^[6] He travelled to Spain in 1826, but returned to Bordeaux, where he died of a stroke in 1828, at the age of 82. He was of Catholic faith and was buried in Bordeaux; in 1919 his remains were transferred to the Royal Chapel of St. Anthony of La Florida in Madrid.

Leocadia was left nothing in Goya's will; mistresses were often omitted in such circumstances, but it is also likely that he did not want to dwell on his mortality by thinking about or revising his will. She wrote to a number of Goya's friends to complain of her exclusion but many of her friends were Goya's also and by then old men and had died, or died before they could reply. Largely destitute she moved into rented accommodation and passed on her copy of the Caprichos for free.^[13]

Work [link]

See also List of works by Francisco Goya

Goya painted the Spanish royal family, including Charles IV of Spain and Ferdinand VII. His thematic range extended from merry festivals for tapestry, draft cartoons, to scenes of war and human debasement. This evolution reflects the darkening of his temper. Modern physicians suspect that the lead in his pigments poisoned him and caused his deafness after 1792. Near the end of his life, he became reclusive and produced frightening and obscure paintings of insanity, madness, and fantasy, while the style of the Black Paintings prefigures the expressionist movement.

Maja [link]

The Nude Maja, ca. 1800. Said to be the first explicit depiction of female pubic hair in a large Western painting, though others had hinted at it before

The Clothed Maja, ca. 1803, the more chaste, but teasingly provocative, companion panel

Two of Goya's best known paintings are The Nude Maja (La maja desnuda) and The Clothed Maja (La maja vestida). They depict the same woman in the same pose, naked and clothed, respectively. Without a pretense to allegorical or mythological meaning, the painting was "the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art".^[14]

The identity of the Majas are uncertain. The most popularly cited models are the Duchess of Alba, with whom Goya was sometimes thought to have had an affair, and Pepita Tudó, mistress of Manuel de Godoy; Godoy subsequently owned them. Neither theory has been verified, and it remains as likely that the paintings represent an idealized composite.^[15] The paintings were never publicly exhibited during Goya's lifetime. They were owned by Manuel de Godoy, the Prime Minister of Spain and a favorite of the Queen, María Luisa.^[16] In 1808 all Godoy's property was seized by Ferdinand VII after his fall from power and exile, and in 1813 the Inquisition confiscated both works as 'obscene', returning them in 1836 to the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando.^[17]

Darker subject matter [link]

Yard with Lunatics, 1794. Oil on tin-plated iron, 43.8 x 32.7 cm

In a period of convalescence during 1793–1794, Goya completed a set of eleven small pictures painted on tin; known as Fantasy and Invention, they mark a significant change in his art. They no longer represent the world of popular carnival, but rather a dark, dramatic realm of fantasy and nightmare. Yard with Lunatics is a horrifying and imaginary vision of loneliness, fear and social alienation, a departure from the rather more superficial treatment of mental illness in the works of earlier artists such as Hogarth. The condemnation of brutality towards prisoners (whether criminal or insane) is the subject of many of Goya’s later paintings.

As he completed Yard with Lunatics, Goya was himself undergoing a physical and mental breakdown. It was a few weeks after the French declaration of war on Spain, and Goya’s illness was developing. A contemporary reported, “the noises in his head and deafness aren’t improving, yet his vision is much better and he is back in control of his balance.” His symptoms may indicate a prolonged viral encephalitis or possibly a series of miniature strokes resulting from high blood pressure and affecting hearing and balance centers in the brain. The triad of tinnitus, episodes of imbalance and progressive deafness is also typical of Ménière's disease. Other postmortem diagnostic assessment points toward paranoid dementia due to unknown brain trauma (perhaps due to the unknown illness which he reported). If this is the case, from here on—we see an insidious assault of his faculties, manifesting as paranoid features in his paintings, culminating in his black paintings and especially Saturn Devouring His Sons.

Caprichos and Tapestry cartoons [link]

Main article: Caprichos

In 1799 Goya published a series of 80 prints titled Caprichos depicting what he described as "the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual".^[18]

The dark visions depicted in these prints are partly explained by his caption, "The sleep of reason produces monsters". Yet these are not solely bleak in nature and demonstrate the artist's sharp satirical wit, particularly evident in etchings such as Hunting for Teeth. Additionally, one can discern a thread of the macabre running through Goya's work, even in his earlier tapestry cartoons.^{[note 1]} Mostly popularist in a rococo style, the cartoons were completed early in his career, when he was largely unknown and actively seeking commissions. In 1774, he was asked, on behalf of the Spanish crown, by the German artist Anton Raphael Mengs, to undertake the series. While designing tapestries was neither prestigious nor well paid, Goya used them, along with his early engravings, to bring himself to wider attention.^[19] They afforded his first contact with the Spanish monarchy that was to eventually appoint him court painter.^[20]

[edit] The Disasters of War

Main article: The Disasters of War

What more can one do?, from The Disasters of War, 1812–15

In the 1810s, Goya created a set of aquatint prints titled The Disasters of War. Although he did not make known his intention when creating the plates, art historians view them as a visual protest against the violence of the 1808 Dos de Mayo Uprising, the subsequent Peninsular War of 1808–14 and the setbacks to the liberal cause following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814. The scenes are singularly disturbing, sometimes macabre in their depiction of battlefield horror, and represent an outraged conscience in the face of death and destruction.^[21] They were not published until 1863, 35 years after his death. It is likely that only then was it considered politically safe to distribute a sequence of artworks criticising both the French and restored Bourbons.^[22]

The first 47 plates in the series focus on incidents from the war and show the consequences of the conflict on individual soldiers and civilians. The middle series (plates 48 to 64) record the effects of the famine that hit Madrid in 1811–12, before the city was liberated from the French. The final 17 reflect the bitter disappointment of liberals when the restored Bourbon monarchy, encouraged by the Catholic hierarchy, rejected the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and opposed both state and religious reform. Since their first publication, Goya's scenes of atrocities, starvation, degradation and humiliation have been described as the "prodigious flowering of rage".^[23]

[edit] Black Paintings

Main article: Black Paintings

In an array of earthen colors, a black silhouetted horned figure to the left foreground presides over and addresses a large circle of a tightly packed group of wide-eyed intense, scary, elderly and unruly women.

Witches' Sabbath or Aquelarre is one of 14 from the Black Paintings series.

In later life Goya bought a house, called Quinta del Sordo ("Deaf Man's House"), and painted many unusual paintings on canvas and on the walls, including references to witchcraft and war. One of these is the famous work Saturn Devouring His Son (known informally in some circles as Devoration or Saturn Eats His Child), which displays a Greco-Roman mythological scene of the god Saturn consuming a child, possibly a reference to Spain's ongoing civil conflicts. The series has been described as "the most essential to our understanding of the human condition in modern times, just as Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling is essential to understanding the tenor of the 16th century".^[24]

At the age of 75, alone and in mental and physical despair, he completed the work as one of his 14 Black Paintings,^{[note 2]} all of which were executed in oil directly onto the plaster walls of his house. Goya did not intend for the paintings to be exhibited, did not write of them,^{[note 3]} and likely never spoke of them.^[25] It was not until around 1874, some 50 years after his death, that they were taken down and transferred to a canvas support. Many of the works were significantly altered during the restoration, and in the words of Arthur Lubow what remain are "at best a crude facsimile of what Goya painted."^[26] The effects of time on the murals, coupled with the inevitable damage caused by the delicate operation of mounting the crumbling plaster on canvas, meant that most of the murals suffered extensive damage and loss of paint. Today they are on permanent display at the Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Films [link]

Goya's Ghosts (2006) is a film directed by Academy Award Winner Miloš Forman.

Volavérunt (1999) directed by Bigas Luna and based on the homonym novel of Antonio Larreta.

Goya in Bordeaux (1999) Spanish historical drama film written and directed by Carlos Saura about the life of Francisco de Goya.

Notes [link]

^ The word cartoon is derived from the Italian cartone, which describes a large sheet of paper used in preparation for a later painting or tapestry.
^ A contemporary inventory compiled by Goya's friend, the painter Antonio de Brugada, records 15. See Lubow, 2003
^ As he had with for the "Caprichos" and "The Disasters of War" series. Licht 159

References [link]

^ Goya and Modernism, Bienal Internacional de São Paulo Retrieved 27 July 2007
^ Galeria de Arte transparencias Ancora A Todo Color 1961 Goya biography from the Museo del Prado. As quoted on eeweems.com
^ Chocano, Carina. "Goya's Ghosts". Los Angeles Times, 20 July 2007. Retrieved on 18 January 2008.
^ Licht, Fred: Goya: The Origins of the Modern Temper in Art, page 68. Universe Books, 1979. "Even if one takes into consideration the fact that Spanish portraiture is often realistic to the point of eccentricity, Goya's portrait still remains unique in its drastic description of human bankruptcy".
^ Junquera, 13
^ ^a ^b Stevenson, 243
^ Gassier, 103
^ Buchholz, 79
^ Connell, 28
^ Hughes, 402
^ Hughes, 372
^ Junquera, 68
^ Connell, 235
^ Licht, 83
^ "The Nude Maja, the Prado". Retrieved 17 July 2010.
^ The unflinching eye.. The Guardian, October 2003.
^ Museo del Prado, Catálogo de las pinturas. Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Madrid, 1996. 138. ISBN 84-87317-53-7
^ The Sleep of Reason Linda Simon (www.worldandi.com). Retrieved 2 December 2006.
^ Hagen & Hagen, 7
^ Hughes, 103
^ Wilson-Bareau, 45
^ Jones, Jonathan. "Look what we did". The Guardian, 31 March 2003. Retrieved 29 August 2009.
^ Connell, 175
^ Licht, 167
^ Licht, 159
^ Lubow, Arthur. "The Secret of the Black Paintings". New York Times, 27 July 2003. Retrieved 3 October 2010.

Sources [link]

Ciofalo, John J. The Self-Portraits of Francisco Goya. Cambridge University Press, 2001
Tomlinson, Janis. Francisco Goya y Lucientes 1746–1828'.' Phaidon, 1999, 1994.
Buchholz, Elke Linda. Francisco de Goya. Cologne: Könemann, 1999. ISBN 3-8290-2930-6
Connell, Evan S. Francisco Goya: A Life. New York: Counterpoint, 2004. ISBN 1-58243-307-0
Gassier, Pierre. Goya: A Biographical and Critical Study. New York: Skira, 1955
Havard, Robert. "Goya's House Revisited: Why a Deaf Man Painted his Walls Black". Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume 82, Issue 5 July 2005. 615 – 639
Hughes, Robert. Goya. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. ISBN 0-394-58028-1
Junquera, Juan José. The Black Paintings of Goya‎. London: Scala Publishers, 2008. ISBN 1-85759-273-5
Licht, Fred. Goya: The Origins of the Modern Temper in Art. Universe Books, 1979. ISBN 0-87663-294-0

External links [link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

Goya in Aragon Foundation: Online catalogue
Goya, the Secret of the Shadows, a documentary film by David Mauas, Spain, 2011, 77'
Ricci-art/com, Paintings by Francisco Goya
CaprichosPDF (10.0 MB) (PDF in the Arno Schmidt Reference Library)
Desastres de la guerraPDF (10.6 MB) (PDF in the Arno Schmidt Reference Library)
Disasters of War at all-art.org
Etching series by Goya
Smithsonian Institution exhibit “Legacy: Spain and the United States in the Age of Independence, 1763–1848”, 27 Sept. 2007 – 10 Feb. 2008
Francisco Goya Prints, a Claremont Colleges Digital Library collection from the Pomona College Museum of Art
Nyu.edu, The Sleep of Reason
The Sleep of Reason – article in World&I Magazine
Francisco de Goya's Black paintings
His Majesty’s Giant Anteater - A New Goya is Discovered!
{fr} Bibliothèque numérique de l'INHA - Estampes de Francisco de Goya

Francisco Goya

List of works

Paintings

Blind Guitarist (1778) Christ Crucified (1780) Maria Teresa de Borbon y Vallabriga (1783) Spring (or The Flower Girls) (1786–1787) The Swing (1787) St Francis Borja at the Deathbed of an Impenitent (1788) Manuel Osorio de Zuniga (c. 1788) Witches' Sabbath (1789) Self-portrait (c. 1790–1795) Little Giants (1791–1792) Portrait of Mariana Waldstein (c. 1792) Strolling Players (1793) Yard with Lunatics (1793–1794) Marquesa de la Solana (c. 1794–1795) Duchess of Alba (1797) Self-Portrait with Eyeglasses (1797) The Bewitched Man (1797-1798) The Devil's Lamp (1797-1798) Witches' Flight (1797-98) Charles IV in his Hunting Clothes (1799) Countess of Chinchon (1800) La maja desnuda Charles IV of Spain and His Family (1800–1801) La maja vestida Bartolome Sureda y Miserol (c. 1803–1804) Portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel (1804–1805) Portrait of Francisca Sabasa García (1804-1808) Doña Teresa Sureda (c. 1805) The Colossus (1808–1812; attribution debated) Majas on a Balcony (c. 1808–1812) Time (c. 1810–1812) Prison Interior (c. 1810–1814) The Second of May 1808 (1814) The Third of May 1808 (1814) The Junta of the Philippines (1815) The Madhouse (1812-1819) The Inquisition Tribunal (1812-1819) The Burial of the Sardine (c. 1816) A Procession of Flagellants (c. 1816) The Forge (c. 1817) The Giant (1818) Self-portrait with Dr Arrieta (1820) The Milkmaid of Bordeaux (1825–1827)

Tapestry cartoons	The Parasol (c. 1777) Blind man's bluff (1789)

Black Paintings (Pinturas negras) (c. 1819-23)	Saturn Devouring His Son Judith and Holofernes Witches' Sabbath A Pilgrimage to San Isidro La Leocadia Two Old Men Men Reading Man Mocked by Two Women Fight with Cudgels Procession of the Holy Office Atropos Asmodea Two Old Men Eating Soup The Dog

Etchings

Los Caprichos	The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1797–1798) What a sacrifice! (1797–1798) They say yes and give their hand to the first comer (1797–1798) Que se la llevaron! (1797–1798) You who cannot (1797–1798)

The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra)	Contra el bien general (c. 1810) This is worse (c. 1812–1813) May the rope break! (c. 1815)

Tauromaquia	Unfortunate events in the front seats of the ring of Madrid, and the death of the Mayor of Torrejón (1815–1816)

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Persondata
Name	Goya, Francisco
Alternative names	Lucientes, Francisco José De La Goya y
Short description	Aragonese Spanish painter and printmaker
Date of birth	(1746-03-30)30 March 1746
Place of birth	Fuendetodos
Date of death	16 April 1828(1828-04-16)
Place of death	Bordeaux

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Enrico Caruso, c. 1907

Enrico Caruso (Italian pronunciation: [enˈriːko kaˈruːzo]) (February 25, 1873 – August 2, 1921) was an Italian tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and North and South America, appearing in a wide variety of roles from the Italian and French repertoires that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic. Caruso also made approximately 290 commercially released recordings from 1902 to 1920. All of these recordings, which span most of his stage career, are available today on CDs and as digital downloads.

Caruso's 1904 recording of "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci was the first sound recording to sell a million copies.^[1]

1 Historical and musical significance
2 Life and career
3 Honors
4 Repertoire
5 Recordings
6 Media
7 See also
8 Bibliography
9 Notes
10 References
11 External links

Historical and musical significance [link]

File:CarusoPostcard.jpg

Enrico Caruso, c. 1910

Caruso's 25-year career, stretching from 1895 to 1920, included 863 appearances at the New York Metropolitan Opera before he died from an infection at the age of 48. His fame has lasted to the present day despite the limited marketing and promotional vehicles available during Caruso's era. (He was, nonetheless, a client of Edward Bernays, during the latter's tenure as a press agent in the United States.)^[2] Publicity in Caruso's time relied on newspapers, particularly wire services, along with magazines, photography and relatively instantaneous communication via the telephone and the telegraph, to spread a message and raise a performer's profile.

Caruso biographers Pierre Key, Bruno Zirato and Stanley Jackson^[3]^[4] attribute Caruso's fame not only to his voice and musicianship but also to a keen business sense and an enthusiastic embrace of commercial sound recording, then in its infancy. Many opera singers of Caruso's time rejected the phonograph (or gramophone) owing to the low fidelity of early discs. Others, including Adelina Patti, Francesco Tamagno and Nellie Melba, exploited the new technology once they became aware of the financial returns that Caruso was reaping from his initial recording sessions.^[5]

Caruso made more than 260 extant recordings in America for the Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA Victor) from 1904 to 1920, and he earned millions of dollars in royalties from the retail sales of the resulting 78-rpm discs. (Previously, in Italy in 1902–1903, he had cut five batches of records for the Gramophone & Typewriter Company, the Zonophone label and Pathé Records.) He was also heard live from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in 1910, when he participated in the first public radio broadcast to be transmitted in the United States.

Caruso appeared in newsreels too, as well as a short experimental film made by Thomas Edison and two commercial motion pictures. For Edison, in 1911, Caruso portrayed the role of Edgardo in a filmed scene from Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor. In 1918, he appeared in a dual role in the American silent film My Cousin for Paramount Pictures. This movie included a sequence of him on stage performing the aria "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci. The following year Caruso played a character called Cosimo in another movie, The Splendid Romance. Producer Jesse Lasky paid Caruso $100,000 to appear in these two efforts but they both flopped at the box office.

While Caruso sang at such venues as La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London, the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, he was also the leading tenor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City for 18 consecutive seasons. It was at the Met, in 1910, that he created the role of Dick Johnson in Giacomo Puccini's La fanciulla del West.

Caruso's voice extended up to high C in its prime and grew in power and weight as he grew older. He sang a broad spectrum of roles, ranging from lyric, to spinto, to dramatic parts, in the Italian and French repertoires. In the German repertoire, Caruso sang only two roles, Assad (in Karl Goldmark's The Queen of Sheba) and Richard Wagner's Lohengrin, both of which he performed in Italian in Buenos Aires in 1899 and 1901 respectively.^[6]

Life and career [link]

Early life [link]

Enrico Caruso in the role of Dick Johnson, 1910/1911

Enrico Caruso came from a poor but not destitute background. Born in Naples in the Via San Giovannello agli Ottocalli 7 on February 25, 1873, he was baptised the next day in the adjacent Roman Catholic Church of San Giovanni e Paolo. Called Errico in accordance with the Neapolitan dialect, he would later adopt the formal Italian version of his given name, Enrico (the equivalent of "Henry" in English). This change came at the suggestion of a singing teacher, Guglielmo Vergine, with whom he began lessons at the age of 16.

Caruso was the third of seven children and one of only three to survive infancy. There is a story of Caruso having had 17 or 18 siblings who died in infancy. Two of his biographers, Francis Robinson and Pierre Key, mentioned the tale in their books, but genealogical research by Caruso family friend Guido D'Onofrio suggested it was false. According to Caruso's son Enrico, Jr., Caruso and his brother Giovanni may have been the source of the exaggerated number.^[7] Caruso's widow Dorothy also included the story in a memoir that she wrote about her husband. She quotes the tenor, speaking of his mother, Anna Caruso (née Baldini): "She had twenty-one children. Twenty boys and one girl – too many. I am number nineteen boy."^[8]

Caruso's father, Marcellino, was a mechanic and foundry worker. Initially, Marcellino thought that his son should adopt the same trade, and at the age of 11, the boy was apprenticed to a mechanical engineer named Palmieri who constructed public water fountains. (Whenever visiting Naples in future years, Caruso liked to point out a fountain that he had helped to install.) Caruso later worked alongside his father at the Meuricoffre factory in Naples. At his mother's insistence, he also attended school for a time, receiving a basic education under the tutelage of a local priest. He learned to write in a handsome script and studied technical draftsmanship.^[9] During this period he sang in his church choir, and his voice showed enough promise for him to contemplate a possible career in music.

Caruso was encouraged in his early musical ambitions by his mother, who died in 1888. To raise cash for his family, he found work as a street singer in Naples and performed at cafes and soirees. Aged 18, he used the fees he had earned by singing at an Italian resort to buy his first pair of new shoes. His progress as a paid entertainer was interrupted, however, by 45 days of compulsory military service. He completed this in 1894, resuming his voice lessons with Vergine upon discharge from the army.

Early career [link]

At the age of 22, Caruso made his professional stage debut in serious music. The date was March 15, 1895 at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples. The work in which he appeared was a now-forgotten opera, L'Amico Francesco, by the amateur composer Domenico Morelli. A string of further engagements in provincial opera houses followed, and he received instruction from the conductor and voice teacher Vincenzo Lombardi that improved his high notes and polished his style. Three other prominent Neapolitan singers taught by Lombardi were the baritones Antonio Scotti and Pasquale Amato, both of whom would go on to partner Caruso at the Met, and the tenor Fernando De Lucia, who would also appear at the Met and later sing at Caruso's funeral.

Money continued to be in short supply for the young Caruso. One of his first publicity photographs, taken on a visit to Sicily in 1896, depicts him wearing a bedspread draped like a toga since his sole dress shirt was away being laundered. At a notorious early performance in Naples, he was booed by a section of the audience because he failed to pay a claque to cheer for him. This incident hurt Caruso's pride. He never appeared again on stage in his native city, stating later that he would return "only to eat spaghetti".

During the final few years of the 19th century, Caruso performed at a succession of theaters throughout Italy until, in 1900, he was rewarded with a contract to sing at La Scala in Milan, the country's premier opera house. His La Scala debut occurred on December 26 of that year in the part of Rodolfo in Giacomo Puccini's La bohème with Arturo Toscanini conducting. Audiences in Monte Carlo, Warsaw and Buenos Aires also heard Caruso sing during this pivotal phase of his career and, in 1899–1900, he appeared before the Tsar and the Russian aristocracy at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow as part of a touring company of first-class Italian singers.

The first major operatic role that Caruso was given the responsibility of creating was Loris in Umberto Giordano's Fedora, at the Teatro Lirico, Milan, on November 17, 1898. At that same theater, on November 6, 1902, he would create the role of Maurizio in Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur. (Puccini considered casting the young Caruso in the role of Cavaradossi in Tosca at its premiere in 1900, but ultimately chose the older, more established Emilio De Marchi instead.)

CarusoO.jpg

The medal that Enrico Caruso gave to Pasquale Simonelli, his New York City impresario
Obverse: Caruso facing left. Lower right: Salanto, medal maker's signature.
CarusoR.jpg

Reverse: Muse of music with lyre over PER RICORDO (memento). Around the rim:
TIFFANY & Co. 24 CARAT GOLD Y (27 mm).

Caruso took part in a "grand concert" at La Scala in February 1901 that Toscanini organised to mark the recent death of Giuseppe Verdi. Among those appearing with him at the concert were two other leading Italian tenors of the day, Francesco Tamagno (the creator of the protagonist's role in Verdi's Otello) and Giuseppe Borgatti (the creator of the protagonist's role in Giordano's Andrea Chénier). He embarked on his last series of La Scala performances in March 1902, creating along the way the principal tenor part in Germania by Alberto Franchetti.

A month later, he was engaged by the Gramophone & Typewriter Company to make his first group of acoustic recordings, in a Milan hotel room, for a fee of 100 pounds sterling. These 10 discs swiftly became best-sellers. Among other things, they helped to spread 29-year-old Caruso's fame throughout the English-speaking world. The management of London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, signed him for a season of appearances in eight different operas ranging from Verdi's Aida to Don Giovanni by Mozart. His successful debut at Covent Garden occurred on May 14, 1902, as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's Rigoletto. Covent Garden's highest-paid diva, the Australian soprano Nellie Melba, partnered him as Gilda. They would sing together often during the early 1900s. In her memoirs, Melba praised Caruso's voice but considered him to be a less sophisticated musician and interpretive artist than Jean de Reszke—the Met's biggest tenor drawcard prior to Caruso.

The Metropolitan Opera [link]

The following year, 1903, Caruso traveled to New York City to take up a contract with the Metropolitan Opera. (The gap between his London and New York engagements was filled by a series of performances in Italy, Portugal and South America.) Caruso's Met contract had been negotiated by his agent, the banker and impresario Pasquale Simonelli. Caruso's debut at the Met was in a new production of Rigoletto on November 23, 1903. This time, Marcella Sembrich sang opposite him as Gilda. A few months later, he began a lasting association with the Victor Talking-Machine Company. He made his first American discs on February 1, 1904, having signed a lucrative financial deal with Victor. Thereafter, his recording career ran in tandem with his Met career, the one bolstering the other, until he died in 1921.

Caruso purchased the Villa Bellosguardo, a palatial country house near Florence, in 1904. The villa became his retreat away from the pressures of the operatic stage and the grind of travel. Caruso's preferred address in New York City was a suite at Manhattan's Knickerbocker Hotel. (The Knickerbocker was erected in 1906 on the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street.) Caruso commissioned the New York jewelers Tiffany & Co. to strike a 24-carat-gold medal adorned with the tenor's profile. He presented the medal in gratitude to Simonelli as a souvenir of his many well remunerated performances at the Met (see illustration, above).

In addition to his regular New York engagements, Caruso gave recitals and operatic performances in a large number of cities across the United States and sang in Canada. He also continued to sing widely in Europe, appearing again at Covent Garden in 1904–07 and 1913–14; and undertaking a UK tour in 1909.^[10] Audiences in France, Belgium, Monaco, Austria, Hungary and Germany heard him, too, prior to the outbreak of World War I. In 1909, Melba asked him to participate in her forthcoming tour of Australia; but he declined the invitation because of the significant amount of travel time that such a trip would entail.

Members of the Met's roster of artists, including Caruso, had visited San Francisco in April 1906 for a series of performances. Following an appearance as Don Jose in Carmen at the city's Grand Opera House, a strong jolt awakened Caruso at 5:13 on the morning of the 18th in his suite at the Palace Hotel. He found himself in the middle of the San Francisco Earthquake, which led to a series of fires that destroyed most of the city. The Met lost all the sets and costumes that it had brought on tour but none of the artists was harmed. Holding an autographed photo of President Theodore Roosevelt, Caruso made an ultimately successful effort to flee the city, first by boat and then by train. He vowed never to return to San Francisco and kept his word.^[11]^[12]

In November 1906, Caruso was charged with an indecent act allegedly committed in the monkey house of New York's Central Park Zoo. The police accused him of pinching the bottom of a married woman. Caruso claimed a monkey did the bottom-pinching. He was found guilty as charged, however, and fined 10 dollars, although suspicions linger that he may have been entrapped by the victim and the arresting officer. The leaders of New York's opera-going high society were outraged initially by the incident, which received widespread newspaper coverage, but they soon forgot about it and continued to attend Caruso's Met performances.^[13] Caruso's fan base at the Met was not restricted, however, to the wealthy. Members of America's middle-classes also paid to hear him sing—or buy copies of his recordings—and he enjoyed a substantial following among New York's 500,000 Italian immigrants.

Caruso created the role of Dick Johnson in the world premiere of Puccini's La fanciulla del West on December 10, 1910. The composer conceived the music for the tenor hero with Caruso's voice specifically in mind. With Caruso appeared two more of the Met's star singers, the Czech soprano Emmy Destinn and baritone Pasquale Amato. Toscanini, then the Met's principal conductor, presided in the orchestra pit.

Later career and personal life [link]

From 1916 onwards, Caruso began adding heroic parts such as Samson, John of Leyden and Eléazar to his repertoire, while he planned to tackle Otello (the most demanding role written by Verdi for the tenor voice) at the Met during 1921.

Caruso toured the South American nations of Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil in 1917 and two years later performed in Mexico City. In 1920, he was paid the then enormous sum of 10,000 American dollars a night to sing in Havana, Cuba.^[14]

The United States had entered World War I in 1917, sending troops to Europe. Caruso did extensive charity work during the conflict, raising money for war-related patriotic causes by giving concerts and participating enthusiastically in Liberty Bond drives. The tenor had shown himself to be a shrewd businessman since arriving in America. He put a sizable proportion of his earnings from record royalties and singing fees into a range of investments. Biographer Michael Scott writes that by the end of the war in 1918, Caruso's annual income tax bill amounted to $154,000.^[15]

Prior to World War One, Caruso had been romantically tied to an Italian soprano, Ada Giachetti, who was a few years older than he was.^[16] Though already married, Giachetti bore Caruso four sons during their liaison, which lasted from 1897 to 1908. Two survived infancy: Rodolfo Caruso (born 1898) and singer/actor Enrico Caruso, Jr. (1904). Ada had left her husband, manufacturer Gino Botti, and an existing son to cohabit with the tenor. Information provided in Scott's biography of Caruso suggests that she was his vocal coach as well as his lover.^[17] Statements by Enrico Caruso, Jr. in his book tend to substantiate this.^[18]^[19] Her relationship with Caruso broke down after 11 years and they separated. Giachetti's subsequent attempts to sue him for damages were dismissed by the courts.^[20]

Towards the end of the war, Caruso met and wooed a 25-year-old socialite, Dorothy Park Benjamin. She was the daughter of a wealthy New York patent lawyer. In spite of the disapproval of Dorothy's father, the couple wed on August 20, 1918. They had a daughter, Gloria Caruso (1919–1999). Dorothy lived until 1955 and wrote two books about Caruso, whom she had called "Rico" in private life. Published in 1928 and 1945, her books include many of Caruso's letters to his "Doro".^[21]

A fastidious dresser, Caruso took two baths a day and liked good Italian food and convivial company. He forged a particularly close bond with his Met and Covent Garden colleague Antonio Scotti—an amiable and stylish baritone from Naples. Caruso was superstitious and habitually carried good-luck charms with him when he sang. He played cards for relaxation and sketched friends, other singers and musicians. Dorothy Caruso said that by the time she knew him, her husband's favorite hobby was compiling scrapbooks. He also amassed a valuable collection of rare postage stamps, coins, watches and antique snuffboxes. Caruso was a heavy smoker of strong Egyptian cigarettes, too. This deleterious habit, combined with a lack of exercise and the punishing schedule of performances that Caruso willingly undertook season after season at the Met, may have contributed to the persistent ill-health which afflicted the last 12 months of his life.

Illness and death [link]

On September 16, 1920, Caruso attended Victor's prime recording venue, Trinity Church, at Camden, New Jersey, for the final time. He recorded several discs over three days, including the "Domine Deus" and "Crucifixus" from the Petite Messe Solennelle by Rossini. These discs were to be his last.

Dorothy Caruso noted that her husband's health began a distinct downward spiral in late 1920 after returning from a lengthy North American concert tour. In his biography, Enrico Caruso, Jr. points to an on-stage injury suffered by Caruso as the possible trigger of his fatal illness. A falling pillar in Samson and Delilah on December 3 had hit him on the back, over the left kidney (and not on the chest as popularly reported).^[22] A few days before a performance of Pagliacci at the Met (Pierre Key says it was December 4, the day after the Samson and Delilah injury) he suffered a chill and developed a cough and a "dull pain in his side". It appeared to be a severe episode of bronchitis. Caruso's physician, Philip Horowitz, who usually treated him for migraine headaches with a kind of primitive TENS unit, diagnosed "intercostal neuralgia" and pronounced him fit to appear on stage, although the pain continued to hinder his voice production and movements.

During a performance of L'elisir d'amore by Donizetti at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on December 11, 1920, he suffered a throat haemorrhage and the performance was canceled at the end of Act 1. Following this incident, a clearly unwell Caruso gave only three more performances at the Met, the final one being as Eléazar in Halévy's La Juive, on December 24, 1920. (Also appearing that night was the Australian coloratura soprano, Evelyn Scotney, who had sung with Caruso a number of times.^[23]) By Christmas Day, the pain in his side was so excruciating that he was screaming. Dorothy summoned the hotel physician, who gave Caruso some morphine and codeine and called in another doctor, Evan M. Evans. Evans brought in three other doctors and Caruso finally received a correct diagnosis, purulent pleurisy and empyema.^[24]^[25]

Caruso's health deteriorated further during the new year. He experienced episodes of intense pain because of the infection and underwent seven surgical procedures to drain fluid from his chest and lungs.^[26] He returned to Naples to recuperate from the most serious of the operations, during which part of a rib had been removed. According to Dorothy Caruso, he seemed to be recovering, but allowed himself to be examined by an unhygienic local doctor and his condition worsened dramatically after that.^[27]^[28] The Bastianelli brothers, eminent medical practitioners with a clinic in Rome, recommended that his left kidney be removed. He was on his way to Rome to see them but, while staying overnight in the Vesuvio Hotel in Naples, he took an alarming turn for the worse and was given morphine to help him sleep.

Caruso died at the hotel a few minutes after 9:00 am local time, on August 2, 1921. He was 48. The Bastianellis attributed the likely cause of death to peritonitis arising from a burst subrenal abscess.^[29]^[30] The King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, opened the Royal Basilica of the Church of San Francesco di Paola for Caruso's funeral, which was attended by thousands of people. His embalmed body was preserved in a glass sarcophagus at Del Pianto Cemetery in Naples for mourners to view.^[31] In 1929, Dorothy Caruso had his remains sealed permanently in an ornate stone tomb.

Honors [link]

During his lifetime, Caruso received many orders, decorations, testimonials and other kinds of honors from monarchs, governments and miscellaneous cultural bodies of the various nations in which he sang. He was also the recipient of Italian knighthoods. In 1917, he was elected an honorary member of the Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the national fraternity for men involved in music, by the fraternity's Alpha chapter of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. One unusual award bestowed on him was that of "Honorary Captain of the New York Police Force". Caruso was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. On February 27 of that same year, the United States Postal Service issued a 22-cent postage stamp in his honor.^[32] He was voted into Gramophone Magazine's Hall of Fame in 2012.^[33]

Repertoire [link]

Caruso's operatic repertoire consisted primarily of Italian works along with a few roles in French. He also performed two German operas, Wagner's Lohengrin and Goldmark's Die Königin von Saba, singing in Italian, early in his career. Below are the first performances by Caruso, in chronological order, of each of the operas that he undertook on the stage. World premieres are indicated with **.

Caruso signing his autograph; he was obliging with fans

L'amico Francesco (Morelli) – Teatro Nuovo, Napoli, March 15, 1895 (debut)**
Faust – Caserta, March 28, 1895
Cavalleria rusticana – Caserta, April 1895
Camoens (Musoni) – Caserta, May 1895
Rigoletto – Napoli, July 21, 1895
La traviata – Napoli, August 25, 1895
Lucia di Lammermoor – Cairo, October 30, 1895
La Gioconda – Cairo, November 9, 1895
Manon Lescaut – Cairo, November 15, 1895
I Capuleti e i Montecchi – Napoli, December 7, 1895
Malia (Francesco Paolo Frontini) – Trapani, March 21, 1896
La sonnambula – Trapani, March 24, 1896
Marriedda (Bucceri) – Napoli, June 23, 1896
I puritani – Salerno, September 10, 1896
La Favorita – Salerno, November 22, 1896
A San Francisco (Sebastiani) – Salerno, November 23, 1896
Carmen – Salerno, December 6, 1896
Un Dramma in vendemmia (Fornari) – Napoli, February 1, 1897
Celeste (Marengo) – Napoli, March 6, 1897**
Il Profeta Velato (Napolitano) – Salerno, April 8, 1897
La bohème – Livorno, August 14, 1897
La Navarrese – Milano, November 3, 1897
Il Voto (Giordano) – Milano, November 10, 1897**
L'arlesiana – Milano, November 27, 1897**
Pagliacci – Milano, December 31, 1897
La bohème (Leoncavallo) – Genova, January 20, 1898
The Pearl Fishers – Genova, February 3, 1898
Hedda (Leborne) – Milano, April 2, 1898**
Mefistofele – Fiume, March 4, 1898
Sapho (Massenet) – Trento, June 3(?), 1898
Fedora – Milano, November 17, 1898**
Iris – Buenos Aires, June 22, 1899
La regina di Saba (Goldmark) – Buenos Aires, July 4, 1899
Yupanki (Berutti)– Buenos Aires, July 25, 1899**
Aida – St. Petersburg, January 3, 1900
Un ballo in maschera – St. Petersburg, January 11, 1900
Maria di Rohan – St. Petersburg, March 2, 1900
Manon – Buenos Aires, July 28, 1900
Tosca – Treviso, October 23, 1900
Le maschere (Mascagni) – Milano, January 17, 1901**
L'elisir d'amore – Milano, February 17, 1901

Caruso's sketch of himself as Don José in Carmen, 1904

Lohengrin – Buenos Aires, July 7, 1901
Germania – Milano, March 11, 1902**
Don Giovanni – London, July 19, 1902
Adriana Lecouvreur – Milano, November 6, 1902**
Lucrezia Borgia – Lisboa, March 10, 1903
Les Huguenots – New York, February 3, 1905
Martha – New York, February 9, 1906
Madama Butterfly – London, May 26, 1906
L'Africana – New York, January 11, 1907
Andrea Chénier – London, July 20, 1907
Il trovatore – New York, February 26, 1908
Armide – New York, November 14, 1910
La fanciulla del West – New York, December 10, 1910**
Julien – New York, December 26, 1914
Samson et Dalila – New York, November 24, 1916
Lodoletta – Buenos Aires, July 29, 1917
Le prophète – New York, February 7, 1918
L'amore dei tre re – New York, March 14, 1918
La forza del destino – New York, November 15, 1918
La Juive – New York, November 22, 1919.

Note: At the time of his death, Caruso was preparing to perform the title role in Verdi's Otello in an intended Met production.^[34]^[35]

Caruso also had a repertory of more than 520 songs. They ranged from classical compositions to traditional Italian melodies and popular tunes of the day, including a few English-language titles such as George M. Cohan's "Over There" and Henry Geehl's "For You Alone".

Recordings [link]

Media [link]

Caruso alongside his piano

"Sì, pel ciel marmoreo giuro!"

The 1914 recording by Titta Ruffo and Enrico Caruso of Giuseppe Verdi's Otello

"Ombra mai fu"

"Ombra mai fu" (and the introductory recitative) from George Frideric Handel's Serse, recorded in 1920.

"Recondita armonia"

A 1907 performance of "Recondita armonia" from Giacomo Puccini's Tosca

O Mimì, tu più non torni

A 1907 recording with Enrico Caruso as Rodolfo and Antonio Scotti as Marcello of "O Mimì, tu più non torni" from Act IV of Giacomo Puccini's La bohème.

"Una furtiva lagrima"

"Una furtiva lagrima" from Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore Sung in 1911 for the Victor Talking Machine Company.

O soave fanciulla

"O soave fanciulla" from Giacomo Puccini's La bohème, sung by Enrico Caruso and Nellie Melba in 1906.

La donna è mobile

Caruso sings La donna è mobile from Verdi's Rigoletto, c. 1908

Ave Maria

Caruso sings Ave Maria by Percival Benedict Kahn, Mischa Elman on violin (1913)

Vesti La Giubba

March 17, 1907, recording of 'Vesti La Giubba' from Pagliacci

No Pagliaccio non son

Recording of 'No Pagliaccio non son' from Pagliacci

La Partida

Manon! avez-vous peur ... On l'appelle Manon

1912 recording of Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar performing a scene from Act II of Jules Massenet's Manon.

O souverain, O juge, O père!

1916 recording of Rodrigue's Act III aria in Jules Massenet's Le Cid (1885).

Faust: "O merveille! ... A moi les plaisirs"

The Act I finale of Charles Gounod's Faust (1859), sung by Enrico Caruso and Marcel Journet in 1910.

"È scherzo od è follia"

Enrico Caruso, Frieda Hempel, Maria Duchêne, Andrés De Segurola and Léon Rothier performing "È scherzo od è Follia" from Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera in 1914

Problems listening to the files? See media help.

Over There

Caruso singing the popular World War I song by George M. Cohan.

Bibliography [link]

Key, P.V.R. and Zirato, B, Enrico Caruso, a Biography (Little, Brown and Co, Boston, 1922).
Scott, Michael, The Great Caruso (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1988).
Caruso, Dorothy, Enrico Caruso – His Life and Death, with a discography by Jack Caidin (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1945).
Jean-Pierre Mouchon, "Particularités physiques et phonétiques de la voix enregistrée de Caruso", foreword by Prof.André Appaix (in Le Sud Médical et Chirurgical, 99e année, n°2509,Marseille, France, 31 octobre 1964, pp. 11812–11829).
Jean-Pierre Mouchon, "Enrico Caruso. 1873-1921. Sa vie et sa voix. Étude psycho-physiologique, physique, phonétique et esthétique", foreword by Dr.Édouard-Jean Garde (Académie régionale de chant lyrique, Marseille, France, 1966, 106 p., ill.).
Jackson, Stanley, Caruso (Stein and Day, New York, 1972).
Jean-Pierre Mouchon, "Enrico Caruso. His Life and Voice" (Éditions Ophrys, Gap, France, 1974, 77 p., ill.).
Jean-Pierre Mouchon, "Enrico Caruso. L'homme et l'artiste, 4 vol.: Première partie. L'homme (Étude psycho-physiologique et historique), p.1-653 bis, ill.; deuxième partie. L'artiste (étude physique, phonétique, linguistique et esthétique), pp.654–975 bis, bibliographie critique, index des représentations données par Enrico Caruso entre 1895 et 1920, index de ses concerts et récitals,pp. 976-1605 (Paris-Sorbonne 1978, published by Atelier national de reproduction des thèses, Université de Lille III, 9, rue Auguste Angellier, 59046 Lille, France in three volumes, and by Didier-Érudition, Paris, in microfiches).
Pleasants, Henry, The Great Singers (Macmillan Publishing, London, 1983).
Caruso, Enrico Jr., and Farkas, Andrew, Enrico Caruso, My Father and My Family, with a discography by William Moran and a chronology by Tom Kaufman (Amadeus Press, Portland, 1990).
Gargano, Pietro and Cesarini, Gianni, Caruso, Vita e arte di un grande cantante (Longanesi, 1990).
Douglas, Nigel, Legendary Voices (Andre Deutsch, London, 1992).
Jean-Pierre Mouchon, "Chronologie de la carrière artistique du ténor Enrico Caruso" (Académie Régionale de Chant Lyrique, Marseilles, France, 1992, 423 p., ill.).
Vaccaro, Riccardo, Caruso, foreword by Dr. Ruffo Titta (Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Naples, Italy, 1995).
Gargano, Pietro, Una vita una leggenda (Editoriale Giorgio Mondadori, 1997).
Griffith, Hugh, CD liner notes for The Complete Recordings of Enrico Caruso, volumes 1 & 2, produced by Ward Marston (Naxos Historical, 8.110703, 8.110704, (c) 2000 HNH International Ltd).
Potter, John, Tenor: History of a Voice (Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2009).
Steane, John, The Grand Tradition: 70 Years of Singing on Disc (Duckworth, London, 1974).
Jean-Pierre Mouchon, "Caruso in Concert" (in "Étude" n°46, "Hommage à Marguerite-Marie Dubois", January–February–March–April 2010, pp. 12–37, Journal of Association internationale de chant lyrique "Titta Ruffo", Marseilles, France, edited by Professor Jean-Pierre Mouchon, M.A., PhD, Mus.D., D.Li).
Jean-Pierre Mouchon, "Enrico Caruso. L'homme et l'artiste", two volumes (Terra Beata, Société littéraire et historique, 45, bd. Notre-Dame, 13006--Marseille, France, 2011, 1359 pp., ill.^[36]
Il Progresso italo americano, Il banchiere^[37] che portò Caruso^[38] negli US^[39], sezione B – supplemento illustrato della domenica, New York, 27 luglio 1986.

Notes [link]

^ Chronomedia. Accessed on September 11, 2007.
^ "I was able to do it with television and radio and media and all kinds of assists. The popularity that Caruso enjoyed without any of this technological assistance is astonishing." Beverly Sills, Enrico Caruso: The Voice of the Century (A & E Biography, 1998).
^ Key, Pierre and Bruno Zirato, Enrico Caruso, a Biography. Little Brown and Co., 1922.
^ Stanley Jackson, Caruso. Stein and Day, 1973.
^ A.J. Millard, America On Record (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 59–60.
^ Key, Pierre and Bruno Zirato, Enrico Caruso, a Biography. Little Brown and Co., 1922. p. 145
^ Caruso, Enrico Jr., Enrico Caruso, My Father and My Family. Amadeus Press, 1990.
^ Dorothy Caruso, Enrico Caruso, His Life and Death, p. 257.
^ Key and Zirato, p. 16.
^ "Enrico Caruso in Scotland | News". Opera Scotland. 1909-09-03. http://www.operascotland.org/news/136/Enrico+Caruso+in+Scotland+. Retrieved 2012-04-04.
^ William Bronson, The Earth Shook, The Sky Burned
^ An account of the earthquake by Caruso's lifelong friend, the baritone Antonio Scotti, including Scotti's observations of Caruso's behavior, is found in Pierre Key's biography of Caruso, Enrico Caruso: A Biography free online at Google Books, pp. 228–229.
^ David Suisman, "Welcome to the Monkey House: Enrico Caruso and the First Celebrity Trial of the Twentieth Century". In The Believer, June 2004, webpage accessed 2009-05-14.
^ Scott 1991, p. 181.
^ Scott 1991, p. 168.
^ Caruso Love Letters Reveal Passion Behind a Life of Epic Operatic Drama 2005 article describing the discovery of voluminous correspondence between Caruso and Giachetti.
^ Orlando Barone, Caruso Mysteries, article written for the Opera-L discussion list 1996-02-21, page found 2010-10-29.
^ Caruso Jr., p. 338.
^ Wah Keung Chan, The Voice of Caruso from La Scena Musicale Vol. 7, No. 7 online, page found 2010-11-06.
^ Caruso Jr. covers his father's relationship with Giachetti in great detail. Jackson (1973) and Scott (1988) also contain extensive information about the liaison.
^ Gloria Caruso Murray, 79, Artist and Tenor's Daughter, William H. Honan, The New York Times, December 18, 1999
^ Caruso, Jr.'s biography devotes an entire section to medical opinions concerning the tenor's ailments and possible causes of his death.
^ National Library of Australia
^ Dorothy Caruso, pp. 234–244.
^ Pierre Key, p. 386.
^ Caruso described his illness and surgical procedures in a letter to his brother Giovanni, reprinted in Enrico Caruso, His Life in Pictures by Francis Robinson (Bramhall, 1977), p. 137.
^ Dorothy Caruso, pp. 268–270.
^ Biographer Pierre Key attributed Caruso's decline to over-exertion as he convalesced (see p. 389), as did Francis Robinson (p. 139).
^ Dorothy Caruso, p. 275.
^ Enrico Caruso Dies in Native Naples: Death Came Suddenly, New York Times, August 3, 1921, webpage found 2009-05-14.
^ Pringle, Heather, The Mummy Congress, London, 2002, pp. 294–296; see also http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,728911,00.html
^ Scott catalog # 2250.
^ "Enrico Caruso (tenor)". Gramophone. http://www.gramophone.co.uk/HallofFame/ArtistPage/Caruso. Retrieved 11 April 2012.
^ Classical Net – Verdi – Famous Interpretors of Otello
^ Although Caruso died before he could perform Otello, he recorded two extracts from the opera in 1910 and 1914: Otello's aria "Ora e per sempre addio" and the Oath Duet, "Si, pel ciel marmoreo giuro" (with Titta Ruffo as Iago).
^ http://enrico-caruso.dyndns.org/
^ New Page 1 at bluehawk.monmouth.edu
^ http://bluehawk.monmouth.edu/~psimonel/nonno3.jpg
^ http://bluehawk.monmouth.edu/~psimonel/nonno4jpg.jpg

References [link]

Scott, Michael (1991), The Great Caruso, Random House, ISBN 978-0-517-06766-6.

External links [link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Enrico Caruso

Wikisource has the text of a 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica article about Enrico Caruso.

Complete Thesis of Jean-Pierre Mouchon "Enrico Caruso. The men and the Artist website" (Terra Beata, 45, bd. Notre-Dame, 13006—Marseille, France, 2011, 1359 pp., ill. ISBN 2-909366-16-2) http://enrico-caruso.dyndns.org/
Caruso, Dorothy : Enrico Caruso His Life And Death (1945) complete text
Caruso, Enrico and Luisa Tetrazzini: Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing (1909), complete text at Project Gutenberg
"Caruso and the San Francisco Earthquake" San Francisco Museum
Discography of Enrico Caruso on Victor Records from the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings (EDVR)
Enrico Caruso at the Internet Movie Database
The Enrico Caruso Museum of America
The Enrico Caruso Page
Enrico Caruso – Sound Clips and Narration at History of the Tenor
Key, Pierre V.R.: Enrico Caruso; a biography (1922) complete text
Recordings of Caruso Part 1, Part 2 Audio files at Internet Archive
Video of Caruso at 1908 opening of Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires
Enrico Caruso at Find A Grave

Authority control: LCCN: n50034771 | WorldCat

Persondata
Name	Caruso, Enrico
Alternative names
Short description	opera singer
Date of birth	1873-02-25
Place of birth	Naples, Italy
Date of death	1921-08-02
Place of death	Naples, Italy

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"Puccini" redirects here. For other uses, see Puccini (disambiguation).

Giacomo Puccini

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.^[1]^[2] 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",^[3] he is regarded as one of the last major Italian opera composers.^[4]^[5] His repertoire is essentially rooted in verismo,^[6] 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.^[7] Common themes within his operas include the important role, yet usually tragic end, of his heroines, as well as love;^[8] furthermore, there is a strong presence of exoticism in his operas,^[9] with several being set in faraway locations.

1 Early life
2 Puccini at Torre del Lago
- 2.1 Operas written at Torre del Lago
3 Final years
4 Politics
5 Style
6 Music
- 6.1 Operas
- 6.2 Other works and versions
7 Centres for Puccini Studies
8 See also
9 References
10 External links

Early life [link]

Puccini's birthplace, seen in 1984

Statue of Puccini in front of his birthplace

Puccini was born in Lucca in Tuscany, into a family with five generations of musical history behind them, including composer Domenico Puccini. His father died when Giacomo was five years old, and he was sent to study with his uncle Fortunato Magi, who considered him to be a poor and undisciplined student. Magi may have been prejudiced against his nephew because his contract as choir master stipulated that he would hand over the position to Puccini "as soon as the said Signore Giacomo be old enough to discharge such duties." Puccini never took the position of church organist and choir master in Lucca. When he was 17, he saw a performance of Verdi's Aida and became inspired to be an opera composer. He and his brother, Michele, walked 18.5 mi (30 km) to see the performance in Pisa.

In 1880, with the help of a relative and a grant, Puccini enrolled in the Milan Conservatory to study composition with Stefano Ronchetti-Monteviti, Amilcare Ponchielli, and Antonio Bazzini. In the same year, at the age of 21, he composed the Messa, which marks the culmination of his family's long association with church music in his native Lucca. Although Puccini himself correctly titled the work a Messa, referring to a setting of the Ordinary of the Catholic Mass, today the work is popularly known as his Messa di Gloria, a name that technically refers to a setting of only the first two prayers of the Ordinary, the Kyrie and the Gloria, while omitting the Credo, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei.

The work anticipates Puccini's career as an operatic composer by offering glimpses of the dramatic power that he would soon bring forth onto the stage; the powerful "arias" for tenor and bass soloists are certainly more operatic than is usual in church music and, in its orchestration and dramatic power, the Messa compares interestingly with Verdi's Requiem.

While studying at the Conservatory, Puccini obtained a libretto from Ferdinando Fontana and entered a competition for a one-act opera in 1882. Although he did not win, Le Villi was later staged in 1884 at the Teatro Dal Verme and it caught the attention of Giulio Ricordi, head of G. Ricordi & Co. music publishers, who commissioned a second opera, Edgar, in 1889. Edgar failed: it was a bad story and Fontana's libretto was poor. This may have had an effect on Puccini's thinking because when he began his next opera, Manon Lescaut, he announced that he would write his own libretto so that "no fool of a librettist"^[10] could spoil it. Ricordi persuaded him to accept Leoncavallo as his librettist, but Puccini soon asked Ricordi to remove him from the project. Four other librettists were then involved with the opera, due mainly to Puccini constantly changing his mind about the structure of the piece. It was almost by accident that the final two, Illica and Giacosa, came together to complete the opera. They remained with Puccini for his next three operas and probably his greatest successes: La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly.

It may well have been the failure of Edgar that made Puccini so apt to change his mind. Edgar nearly cost him his career. Puccini had eloped with the married Elvira Gemignani and Ricordi's associates were willing to turn a blind eye to his life style as long as he was successful. When Edgar failed, they suggested to Ricordi that he should drop Puccini, but Ricordi said that he would stay with him and made him an allowance from his own pocket until his next opera. Manon Lescaut was a great success and Puccini went on to become the leading operatic composer of his day.

Puccini at Torre del Lago [link]

From 1891 onwards, Puccini spent most of his time at Torre del Lago, a small community about fifteen miles from Lucca situated between the Ligurian Sea and Lake Massaciuccoli, just south of Viareggio. While renting a house there, he spent time hunting, but regularly visited Lucca.

Original poster for Puccini's Tosca

By 1900, he had acquired land and built a villa on the lake, now known as the "Villa Museo Puccini." He lived there until 1921, when pollution produced by peat works on the lake forced him to move to Viareggio, a few kilometres north. After his death, a mausoleum was created in the Villa Puccini and the composer is buried there in the chapel, along with his wife and son who died later.

The Villa Museo Puccini is presently owned by his granddaughter, Simonetta Puccini, and is open to the public.

Operas written at Torre del Lago [link]

	"Donna non vidi mai" From Manon Lescaut, act 1. Sung by Enrico Caruso in 1913. "O soave fanciulla" From La bohème, act 1. Sung by Enrico Caruso and Nellie Melba in 1906. "O mio babbino caro" From Gianni Schicchi, sung by Frances Alda in 1919
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

Manon Lescaut (1893), his third opera, was his first great success. It launched his remarkable relationship with the librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, who collaborated with him on his next three operas, which became his three most famous and most-performed operas. These were:
La bohème (1896) is considered one of his best works as well as one of the most romantic operas ever composed. It is together with Tosca one of today's most popular operas.
Tosca (1900) was arguably Puccini's first foray into verismo, the realistic depiction of many facets of real life including violence. The opera is generally considered of major importance in the history of opera because of its many significant features.
Madama Butterfly (1904) was initially greeted with great hostility (mostly organized by his rivals) but, after some reworking, became another of his most successful operas.

After 1904, compositions were less frequent. Following his passion for driving fast cars, Puccini was nearly killed in a major accident in 1903. In 1906 Giacosa died and, in 1909, there was scandal after Puccini's wife, Elvira, falsely accused their maid Doria Manfredi of having an affair with Puccini. The maid then committed suicide. Elvira was successfully sued by the Manfredis, and Giacomo had to pay damages. Finally, in 1912, the death of Giulio Ricordi, Puccini's editor and publisher, ended a productive period of his career.

However, Puccini completed La fanciulla del West in 1910 and finished the score of La rondine in 1916.

In 1918, Il trittico premiered in New York. This work is composed of three one-act operas: a horrific episode (Il tabarro), in the style of the Parisian Grand Guignol, a sentimental tragedy (Suor Angelica), and a comedy (Gianni Schicchi). Of the three, Gianni Schicchi has remained the most popular, containing the popular aria "O mio babbino caro".

Final years [link]

Giacomo Puccini with conductor Arturo Toscanini

Puccini's last house in Brussels

A chain smoker of Toscano cigars and cigarettes, Puccini began to complain of chronic sore throats towards the end of 1923. A diagnosis of throat cancer led his doctors to recommend a new and experimental radiation therapy treatment, which was being offered in Brussels. Puccini and his wife never knew how serious the cancer was, as the news was only revealed to his son.

Puccini died there on 29 November 1924, from complications after the treatment; uncontrolled bleeding led to a heart attack the day after surgery. News of his death reached Rome during a performance of La bohème. The opera was immediately stopped, and the orchestra played Chopin's Funeral March for the stunned audience. He was buried in Milan, in Toscanini's family tomb, but that was always intended as a temporary measure. In 1926 his son arranged for the transfer of his father's remains to a specially created chapel inside the Puccini villa at Torre del Lago.

Turandot, his final opera, was left unfinished, and the last two scenes were completed by Franco Alfano based on the composer's sketches. Some dispute whether Alfano followed the sketches or not, since the sketches were said to be indecipherable, but he is believed to have done so, since, together with the autographs, he was given (still existing) transcriptions from Guido Zuccoli who was accustomed to interpreting Puccini's handiwork.

When Arturo Toscanini conducted the premiere performance in April 1926 (in front of a sold-out crowd, with every prominent Italian except for Benito Mussolini in attendance), he chose not to perform Alfano's portion of the score. The performance reached the point where Puccini had completed the score, at which time Toscanini stopped the orchestra. The conductor turned to the audience and said: "Here the opera finishes, because at this point the Maestro died." (Some record that he said, more poetically, "Here the Maestro laid down his pen.") (Some record that then Toscanini picked up the baton, turned to the audience, and announced, "But his disciples finished his work." At which time the opera closed to thunderous applause.)

Toscanini's laying down the baton has been misinterpreted by some journalists as a gesture of disapproval of Alfano's contribution. In 2009 William Hartson in the Daily Express told his readers with great authority that "Toscanini never conducted Turandot again." In fact, he conducted it again on the two following nights – including Alfano's ending – a total of three performances.

Toscanini edited Alfano's suggested completion ('Alfano I'), to produce a version now known as 'Alfano II', and this is the version usually used in performance. However, some musicians^[11] consider Alfano I to be a more dramatically complete version.

In 2002, an official new ending was composed by Luciano Berio from original sketches, but this finale has, to date, been performed only infrequently.

Politics [link]

Unlike Verdi and Wagner, Puccini did not appear to be active in the politics of his day. However, Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy at the time, claimed that Puccini applied for admission to the National Fascist Party. While it has been proven that Puccini was indeed among the early supporters of the Fascist party at the time of the election campaign of 1919 (in which the Fascist candidates were utterly defeated, earning a meagre 4,000 votes), there appear to be no records or proof of any application given to the party by Puccini.

This notwithstanding, Fascist propaganda appropriated Puccini's figure, and one of the most widely played marches during Fascist street parades and public ceremonies was the "Inno a Roma" (Hymn to Rome), composed in 1919 by Puccini to lyrics by Fausto Salvatori, based on these verses from Horace's Carmen saeculare:

Alme Sol, curru nitido diem qui / Promis et celas alius que et idem / Nasceris, possis nihil urbe Roma / Visere maius. (O Sun, that unchanged, yet ever new, / Lead'st out the day and bring'st it home, / May nothing be present to thy view / Greater than Rome!)

Style [link]

Puccini photographed in 1908

Puccini clearly occupies a place in the popular tradition of Verdi, his style of orchestration showing the strong influence of Richard Wagner, matching specific orchestral configurations and timbres to different dramatic moments. Whilst at its heart, Puccini's music is based on the traditional diatonic melodies of Italian opera in the time, influences can be heard of "contemporary developments" including the music of Igor Stravinsky and Impressionism. He has been described by Encyclopædia Britannica Online as "In many ways a typical fin de siècle artist".^[12]

The structures of Puccini's works are also noteworthy. While it is to an extent possible to divide his operas into arias or numbers (like Verdi's), his scores are generally through-composed presenting a very strong sense of continuous flow, pace and connectivity, perhaps another sign of Wagner's influence and his strong dramatic sense. Like Wagner, Puccini used leitmotifs to connote characters and sentiments (or combinations thereof). This is most apparent in Tosca, where the three chords which signal the beginning of the opera are used throughout to announce Scarpia; the descending brass motive (Vivacissimo con violenza) is connected to the repressive regime which ruled Rome at the setting of the opera and most clearly to Angelotti, one of the regime's victims; the harp arpeggio figure which appears at Tosca's entrance and the aria Vissi d'arte symbolizing Tosca's religious fervor; the clarinet ascending-descending scale indicating Mario's suffering and his doomed love for Tosca. Several motifs are also linked to Mimi and the bohemians in La bohème and to Cio-Cio San's eventual suicide in Butterfly. Unlike Wagner, Puccini's motifs are in some cases static; they are intended to direct the audience's attention to a particular idea. However, throughout his operas, for example the love motifs in La bohème, there are examples of his melodies developing to signal a change in a character. This is also evident in Tosca; when Scarpia is killed, the final harmony of his motive is modified to a minor triad, depicting his defeat.

Another distinctive quality in Puccini's works is the use of the voice in the style of speech i.e. canto parlando; characters sing short phrases one after another as if they were in conversation. Puccini is also celebrated for his melodic gift and many of his melodies are both memorable and enduringly popular. At their simplest these melodies are made of sequences from the scale, e.g. Quando me'n vo' (Musetta's Waltz) from La bohème and E lucevan le stelle from Act III of Tosca.

Puccini's operas additionally included several themes; one of the most common include that of heroines, who are "devoted body and soul to their lovers";^[13] a tragic end often waits for them due to their guilt.^[14] Examples of leading women who die in his operas include Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly, Mimì in La bohème or Tosca in Tosca. According to Encyclopædia Britannica Online, with such themes Puccini "combines compassion and pity for his heroines with a strong streak of sadism".^[15] Additionally, unusually for operas written by Italian composers up until that time, many of Puccini’s operas are set outside Italy—in exotic places such as Japan (Madama Butterfly), gold-mining country in California (La fanciulla del West), Paris and the Riviera (La rondine), and China (Turandot). A composer within the realm of verismo, this can be seen through his operas, where the usage of common people in everyday, "familiar" situations^[16] (once seen unfit for artistic portrayal) are included, such as in La bohème.^[17]

Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Lloyd Schwartz summarized Puccini thus: "Is it possible for a work of art to seem both completely sincere in its intentions and at the same time counterfeit and manipulative? Puccini built a major career on these contradictions. But people care about him, even admire him, because he did it both so shamelessly and so skillfully. How can you complain about a composer whose music is so relentlessly memorable, even — maybe especially — at its most saccharine?"^[18]

In his work on Puccini, noted Verdi scholar Julian Budden describes Puccini as a gifted and original composer, noting the vibrant innovation hidden in the popularity of works such as "Che gelida manina". He describes the aria in musical terms (the signature embedded in the harmony for example), and points out that its structure was rather unheard of at the time, having three distinct musical paragraphs that nonetheless form a complete and coherent whole. This gumption in musical experimentation was the essence of Puccini's style, as evidenced in his diverse settings and use of the motif to express ideas beyond those in the story and text.

Music [link]

Although Puccini is mainly known for his operas, he also wrote some other orchestral pieces, sacred music, chamber music and songs for voice and piano.

Operas [link]

Le Villi, libretto by Ferdinando Fontana (in one act – premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme, 31 May 1884)
- second version (in two acts – premiered at the Teatro Regio of Torino, 26 December 1884)
- third version (in two acts – premiered at La Scala (the Teatro alla Scala), 24 January 1885)
- fourth version (in two acts – premiered at the Teatro dal Verme, 7 November 1889)
Edgar, libretto by Ferdinando Fontana (in four acts – premiered at La Scala, 21 April 1889)
- second version (in four acts – premiered at the Teatro del Giglio, 5 September 1891)
- third version (in three acts – premiered at the Teatro Comunale, 28 January 1892)
- fourth version (in three acts – premiered at the Teatro Colón di Buenos Aires, 8 July 1905)
Manon Lescaut, libretto by Luigi Illica, Marco Praga and Domenico Oliva (premiered at the Teatro Regio, 1 February 1893)
- second version (premiered at the Teatro Coccia, 21 December 1893)
La bohème, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (premiered at the Teatro Regio of Torino, 1 February 1896)
Tosca, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (premiered at the Teatro Costanzi, 14 January 1900)
Madama Butterfly, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (in two acts – premiered at La Scala, 17 February 1904)
- second version (in two acts – premiered at the Teatro Grande di Brescia, 28 May 1904)
- third version (premiered at Covent Garden, London 10 July 1905)
- fourth version (premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, 28 December 1906)
- fifth version (premiered at the Teatro Carcano, 9 December 1920)
La fanciulla del West, libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini (premiered at the Metropolitan Opera, 10 December 1910)
- second version (premiered at La Scala, 29 December 1912)
La rondine, libretto by Giuseppe Adami (premiered at the Opéra of Monte Carlo, 27 March 1917)
- second version (premiered at the Opéra of Monte Carlo, 10 April 1920)
- third version (possible premier at the Teatro Verdi, 11 April 1924); orchestration of the third act completed in 1994 by Lorenzo Ferrero (premiered at Teatro Regio di Torino, 22 March 1994)
Il trittico (premiered at the Metropolitan Opera, 14 December 1918)
- Il tabarro, libretto by Giuseppe Adami
- Suor Angelica, libretto by Giovacchino Forzano
- Gianni Schicchi, libretto by Giovacchino Forzano
Turandot, libretto by Renato Simoni and Giuseppe Adami (incomplete at the time of Puccini's death, completed by Franco Alfano: premiered at La Scala, 25 April 1926; an alternative completion was commissioned from Luciano Berio in 2002)

Other works and versions [link]

(with dates of premieres and locations)

A te (c.1875)
Preludio a orchestra (1876)
Plaudite populi (Lucca, 1877)
Credo (Lucca, 1878)
Vexilla Regis (1878)
Messa a 4 voci con orchestra (Lucca, 1880) Published in 1951 as Messa di Gloria
Adagio in A major (1881)
Largo Adagetto in F major (c.1881–83)
Salve del ciel Regina (c.1882)
Mentìa l’avviso (c.1882)
Preludio Sinfonico in A major (Milan, 1882)
Fugues (c.1883)
Scherzo in D (1883)
Storiella d’amore (1883)
Capriccio Sinfonico (Milan, 1883)
Sole ed amore (1888)
Crisantemi (String Quartet, 1890, "Alla memoria di Amadeo di Savoia Duca d'Aosta")
Minuetto n.1 (String Quartet, published about 1892, "A.S.A.R. Vittoria Augusta di Borbone, Principessa di Capua")
Minuetto n.2 (String Quartet, published about 1892, "All'esimio violinista prof. Augusto Michelangeli")
Minuetto n.3 (String Quartet, published about 1892, "All'amico maestro Carlo Carignani")
Piccolo valzer (1894)
Avanti Urania! (1896)
Scossa elettrica (1896)
Inno a Diana (1897)
E l'uccellino (1899)
Terra e mare (1902)
Canto d’anime (1904)
Requiem (27 January 1905, Milan)
Casa mia, casa mia (1908)
Sogno d'or (1913)
Pezzo per pianoforte (1916)
Morire? (c.1917) – This song was transposed by a half step (into G-flat major) and set to different text in the 1st revision of his work La Rondine called "Parigi è la città dei desideri" which is sung by Ruggero in the 1st act. Besides the key and text changes, it is the exact music to the aria.
Inno a Roma (1 June 1919, Rome)

Centres for Puccini Studies [link]

Founded in 1996 in Lucca, the Centro Studi Giacomo Puccini embraces a wide range of approaches to the study of Puccini's work.

In the USA, the American Center for Puccini Studies specializes in the presentation of unusual performing editions of composer's works and introduces many neglected or unknown Puccini pieces to the music loving public. It was founded in 2004 by leading Puccini artist and scholar, Dr. Harry Dunstan.

Detailed information about both organizations exists on their websites.

References [link]

Notes

^ "Quick Opera Facts 2007". OPERA America. 2007. Archived from the original on 14 September 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070914040155/http://www.operaamerica.org/pressroom/quickfacts2006.html. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
^ Alain P. Dornic (1995). "An Operatic Survey". Opera Glass. http://opera.stanford.edu/misc/Dornic_survey.html. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
^ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/482661/Giacomo-Puccini
^ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/482661/Giacomo-Puccini
^ http://www.allmusic.com/artist/giacomo-puccini-p1332
^ http://www.columbia.edu/itc/music/NYCO/butterfly/timeline.html
^ http://www.allmusic.com/artist/giacomo-puccini-p1332
^ http://www.allmusic.com/artist/giacomo-puccini-p1332
^ http://www.columbia.edu/itc/music/NYCO/butterfly/timeline.html
^ Carner, Puccini: A Critical Biography, p. ??
^ Ashbrook & Powers, p. ??
^ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/482661/Giacomo-Puccini
^ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/482661/Giacomo-Puccini
^ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/482661/Giacomo-Puccini
^ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/482661/Giacomo-Puccini
^ http://www.columbia.edu/itc/music/NYCO/butterfly/timeline.html
^ http://www.columbia.edu/itc/music/NYCO/butterfly/timeline.html
^ "Lorca without Lorca". The Phoenix. 30 October 2007. http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid50274.aspx. Retrieved 18 November 2007.

Bibliography

Ashbrook W. & Powers H. Puccini's Turandot: The End of the Great Tradition, Princeton Univ. Press, 1991
Carner, Mosco, Puccini: A Critical Biography, Alfred Knopf, 1959
Lynn, Karyl Charna (2005). Italian Opera Houses and Festivals. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-5359-0.
Keolker, James, "Last Acts, The Operas of Puccini and His Italian Contemporaries", 2001.
Leone, Giuseppe and Roberto Zambonini, "Puccini e le 'more' di Silone: viaggio poetico musicale fra 'soavi fanciulle' e coraggiose eroine", Malgrate (Lc), 27 August 2009.
Maehder, Juergen, Turandot (together with Sylvano Bussotti), Pisa (Giardini) 1983.
Maehder, Juergen, "Esotismo e colore locale nell'opera di Puccini", Atti del Io Convegno Internazionale sull'opera di Puccini a Torre del Lago 1983, ed. Jürgen Maehder, Pisa (Giardini) 1985.
Maehder, Juergen, "Zwischen Opera buffa und Melodramma. Italienische Oper im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert", Perspektiven der Opernforschung I, edd. Jürgen Maehder/Jürg Stenzl, Frankfurt/Bern/New York (Peter Lang) 1994.
Maehder, Juergen, "Puccini's Turandot". Taipei (Gao Tan Publishing) 1998, 287 pp. (in collaboration with Kii-Ming Lo).
Maehder, Juergen, Studi pucciniani, 1/1998, Lucca (Centro Studi Giacomo Puccini) 1998, 229 pp., (in collaboration with Virgilio Bernardoni, Michele Girardi, Arthur Groos, Roger Parker, Harold S. Powers, Peter Ross).
Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane (2002). Puccini: A Biography. Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1-55553-530-5.
Puccini, Simonetta (ed.) (2006). Giacomo Puccini in Torre del Lago. Viareggio, Tuscany: Friends of Giacomo Puccini's Houses Association.
Svejda, Jim. The Record Shelf Guide to the Classical Repertoire, 1990 ISBN 1-55958-051-8

External links [link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Giacomo Puccini

"Puccini Vocal and Instrumental Music". Centro Studi di Giacomo Puccini. http://www.puccini.it/scientifica/catmusic.htm. Retrieved 6 February 2008.
"Puccini Operas". Centro Studi di Giacomo Puccini. http://www.puccini.it/scientifica/catalogo%20opere.htm. Retrieved 6 February 2008.
Centro Studi di Giacomo Puccini
American Center for Puccini Studies
Puccini-Research-Center
Festival Puccini e la sua Lucca
Encyclopædia Britannica, Giacomo Puccini
Puccini cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
Free scores by Giacomo Puccini in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
Puccini's music in movies
Works by or about Giacomo Puccini in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Free scores by Giacomo Puccini at the International Music Score Library Project
Free scores by Giacomo Puccini in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)

Authority control: LCCN: n79119152 | WorldCat

Persondata
Name	Puccini, Giacomo
Alternative names	Puccini, Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria
Short description	Italian composer
Date of birth	22 December 1858
Place of birth	Lucca, Italy
Date of death	29 November 1924
Place of death	Brussels

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Puccini

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