The Athens Conservatoire (Greek: Ωδείο Αθηνών) is the oldest conservatoire in modern Greece. It was founded in 1871 by the Athens Music and Drama Society. Initially, the musical instruments that were taught there were limited to the violin and the flute, representative of the ancient Greek Apollonian and Dionysian aesthetic principles. Significantly, piano lessons were not included in the program. In 1881 its new German-taught director Georgios Nazos, in a controversial at that time move, expanded the conservatoire's program by introducing modern Western European-style instruments and theory material.

Among the musicians who have taught at the Athens Consevatoire are Manolis Kalomiris, Felix Petyrek, Elvira de Hidalgo, and Yannos Margaziotis. Notables who were taught at Athens Consevatoire include Spyridon Samaras (1875–1882), Maria Callas (1938), Dimitri Mitropoulos (1919), Gina Bachauer, Nana Mouskouri, Dimitris Sgouros, Mikis Theodorakis. Its current^[update] artistic director is Aris Garoufalis.

Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike most successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote both the lyrics and the music for his songs.

After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and 30s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me, Kate.

Porter's other musicals include Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady, Anything Goes and Can-Can, and his numerous hit songs include "Night and Day", "I Get a Kick out of You", "Well, Did You Evah!" and "I've Got You Under My Skin". He also composed scores for films from the 1930s to the 1950s. He was noted for his sophisticated, suggestive lyrics, clever rhymes and complex forms.

Nana Mouskouri (Greek: Nάνα Μούσχουρη, pronounced [ˈnana ˈmusxuɾi]), born Iōánna Moúschouri (Greek: Ιωάννα Μούσχουρη, [ioˈana ˈmusxuɾi] on October 13, 1934, in Chania, Crete, Greece) is a Greek singer who has sold 300 million records worldwide in a career spanning over five decades, which makes her one of the top-selling female singers of all time. Known as "Nána" to her friends and family as a child (note that in Greek her surname is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable - MOOS-hoo-ree - rather than the second), she has recorded songs in many languages, including Greek, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, Welsh, Mandarin Chinese, Maori and Turkish.

Nana Mouskouri's family lived in Chania, Crete, where her father, Constantine, worked as a film projectionist in a local cinema. Her mother, Alice, also worked in the same local cinema as an usherette. When Mouskouri was three, her family moved to Athens.

Mouskouri's family sent her and her elder sister, Eugenía or "Jenny", to the Athens Conservatoire. Mouskouri had displayed exceptional musical talent from the age of six. Jenny initially appeared to be the more gifted of the two sisters. Financially unable to support both girls' studies, the parents asked their tutor which one should continue. The tutor conceded that Jenny had the better voice, but Nana was the one with the true inner need to sing. Mouskouri has said that a medical examination revealed a difference in her two vocal cords and this could well account for her remarkable singing voice (in her younger years ranging from a husky, dark alto, which she later dropped, to a ringing coloratura mezzo), as opposed to her breathy, raspy speaking voice.

Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini (Lucca, Italy, February 19, 1743 – Madrid, Spain, May 28, 1805) was an Italian classical era composer and cellist whose music retained a courtly and galante style while he matured somewhat apart from the major European musical centers. Boccherini is most widely known for one particular minuet from his String Quintet in E, Op. 11, No. 5 (G 275), and the Cello Concerto in B flat major (G 482). The latter work was long known in the heavily altered version by German cellist and prolific arranger Friedrich Grützmacher, but has recently been restored to its original version. Boccherini composed several guitar quintets including the "Fandango" which was influenced by Spanish music.

Boccherini was born in Lucca, Italy, into a musical family. At a young age he was sent by his father, a cellist and double bass player, to study in Rome. In 1757 they both went to Vienna where they were employed by the court as musicians in the Burgtheater. In 1761 Boccherini went to Madrid, where he was employed by Infante Luis Antonio of Spain, younger brother of King Charles III. There he flourished under royal patronage, until one day when the King expressed his disapproval at a passage in a new trio, and ordered Boccherini to change it. The composer, no doubt irritated with this intrusion into his art, doubled the passage instead, leading to his immediate dismissal. Then he accompanied Don Luis to Arenas de San Pedro, a little town at the Gredos mountains; there and in the closest town of Candeleda, Boccherini wrote many of his most brilliant works.