Joyce DiDonato (born February 13, 1969) is an award-winning American operatic mezzo-soprano particularly admired for her interpretations of the works of Handel, Mozart, and Rossini. DiDonato has performed with many of the world's leading opera companies and orchestras. In 2012 she won a Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Solo.

Joyce DiDonato was born Joyce Flaherty in Prairie Village, Kansas in 1969, the sixth of seven children in a close-knit Irish-American family. She sang in choir and musicals in high school and dreamed of becoming a Broadway star or pop singer. DiDonato entered Wichita State University (WSU) in the autumn of 1988 where she studied vocal music education. She was initially more interested in teaching high school vocal music and musical theatre and did not become interested in opera until her junior year, when she was cast in a school production of Die Fledermaus. After graduating from WSU in the spring of 1992, DiDonato decided to pursue graduate studies in vocal performance at the Academy of Vocal Arts. Following her studies in Philadelphia, she was accepted in Santa Fe Opera's young artist program in 1995. While there she appeared in several minor roles and understudied for larger parts in such operas as Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Richard Strauss' Salome, Kálmán's Gräfin Mariza and the 1994 world premiere of David Lang's Modern Painters. DiDonato was honored as the Outstanding Apprentice Artist by the Santa Fe Opera that year. In 1996 she became a part of Houston Grand Opera's young artist program where she sang from the autumn of 1996 to the spring of 1998. During the summer of 1997, DiDonato participated in San Francisco Opera's Merola Program.

Giovanni Porta (c. 1675 – 21 June 1755) was an Italian opera composer.

Porta is believed to have been born in Venice. One of the masters of early 18th-century opera and one of the leading Venetian musicians, Porta made his way from Rome, to Vicenza, to Verona, then London where his opera Numitore was performed in 1720 by the Royal Academy of Music (1719), and eventually back to Venice and Verona, and finally Munich, where he spent the last 18 years of his life.

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.