Ivan IV Vasilyevich (Russian:  Ива́н Четвёртый, Васи́льевич​ (help·info), Ivan Chetvyorty, Vasilyevich; 25 August 1530 – 28 March [O.S. 18 March] 1584), known in English as Ivan the Terrible (Russian:  Ива́н Гро́зный​ (help·info), Ivan Grozny; lit. Fearsome), was Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 until his death. His long reign saw the conquest of the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia, transforming Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state spanning almost one billion acres, approximately 4,046,856 km² (1,562,500 sq mi). Ivan managed countless changes in the progression from a medieval state to an empire and emerging regional power, and became the first ruler to be crowned as Tsar of all Russia.

Historic sources present disparate accounts of Ivan's complex personality: he was described as intelligent and devout, yet given to rages and prone to episodic outbreaks of mental illness. On one such outburst Tsar beat and unpremeditatedly killed his groomed and chosen heir Ivan Ivanovich. This led Tsardom to be passed to Tsar's younger son: the weak and intellectually disabledFeodor I of Russia. Ivan's legacy is complex: he was an able diplomat, a patron of arts and trade, founder of the Russia's first Print Yard, but he is also remembered for his paranoiac suspiciousness and cruel persecution of nobility.

Georges Bizet (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ bizɛ]) formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, (25 October 1838 – 3 June 1875) was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.

During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he began many theatrical projects during the 1860s, most of which were abandoned. Neither of the two operas that reached the stage—Les pêcheurs de perles and La jolie fille de Perth—was immediately successful.

Janine Micheau (17 April 1914 - 18 October 1976) was a French singer, one of the leading lyric sopranos of her era in France.

Janine (or Jeanine) Micheau was born in Toulouse, and studied voice at the Paris Conservatoire. She made her professional debut at the Opéra-Comique on 16 November 1933, as la Plieuse in Louise, following this with Loys in Juif polonais by Camille Erlanger, the neighbour in Angélique by Jacques Ibert and small roles in Lakmé (Miss Rose) and Mireille (Andreloun).

She later sang Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, Olympia in Les contes d'Hoffmann, Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Leila in Les pêcheurs de perles, Micaela in Carmen, and the title role in Lakmé at the Salle Favart. By 1935 her performances gained her invitations to Marseille (Lakmé), and then (at the instigation of Pierre Monteux) to Amsterdam (Mélisande) and San Francisco. In Buenos Aires Erich Kleiber conducted her in Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier.

She created the role of Creuse in Darius Milhaud's Médée, for her debut at the Paris Opéra in 1940, where she also sang Gilda in Rigoletto, Violetta in La traviata and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, among other roles.

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (23 January 1898 – 11 February 1948), né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage". He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944, 1958).

Eisenstein was born to a middle-class family in Riga, Latvia but his family moved frequently in his early years, as Eisenstein continued to do throughout his life. His father Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein was of German-Jewish and Swedish descent, and his mother, Julia Ivanovna Konetskaya, was from a Russian Orthodox family. His father was an architect and his mother was the daughter of a prosperous merchant. Julia left Riga the same year as the Russian Revolution (1905), bringing Sergei with her to St. Petersburg. Her son would return at times to see his father, who later moved to join them around 1910.Divorce followed and Julia deserted the family to live in France.