Iphigenia ( /ɪfɨdʒɨˈnaɪ.ə/; Ancient Greek: Ἰφιγένεια, Iphigeneia) is a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in Greek mythology. In Attic accounts, her name means "strong-born", "born to strength", or "she who causes the birth of strong offspring."

Artemis punished Agamemnon after he killed a deer in a sacred grove and boasted he was the better hunter. On their way to Troy to participate in the Trojan War, Agamemnon's ships were suddenly motionless, as Artemis stopped the wind in Aulis (ancient Greece). The soothsayer, Calchas, revealed an oracle that appeased Artemis, so that the Achaean fleet could sail. This much is in Homer, who does not discuss the aspect of this episode in which other writers explain that the only way to appease Artemis was to sacrifice Iphigenia to her. According to the earliest versions he did so, but other sources claim that Iphigenia was taken by Artemis to Tauris in Crimea to prepare others for sacrifice, and that the goddess left a deer or a goat (the god Pan transformed) in her place. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women called her Iphimede (Ἰφιμέδη) and told that Artemis transformed her into the goddess Hecate.Antoninus Liberalis said that Iphigenia was transported to the island of Leuke, where she was wedded to immortalized Achilles under the name of Orsilochia.

Michael Cacoyannis (Greek: Μιχάλης Κακογιάννης; 11 June 1922 – 25 July 2011) was a prominent Greek Cypriot filmmaker from Cyprus, best known for his 1964 film Zorba the Greek. He directed the 1983 Broadway revival of the musical based on the film. Much of his work was rooted in classical texts, especially those of the Greek tragedian Euripides. He was nominated for an Academy Award five times, a record for any Greek Cypriot film artist. He received Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film nominations for Zorba the Greek, and two nominations in the Foreign Language Film category for Electra and Iphigenia.

Michalis (or Mikhalis) Kakogiannis was born in 1922 in Limassol, Cyprus as Μιχάλης Κακογιάννης. In 1939, he was sent by his father, Sir Panayotis Loizou Cacoyannis, to London to become a lawyer. However, after producing Greek-language programs for the BBC World Service during World War II, He ended up at the Old Vic school, and enjoyed a brief stage career there under the name Michael Yannis before he began working on films. After having trouble finding a directing job in the British film industry, Cacoyannis moved to Greece, and in 1953 he made his first film, Windfall in Athens.

Johann Peter Schickele (born July 17, 1935) is an American composer, musical educator, and parodist, best known for comedy albums featuring music written by Schickele, but which he presents as being composed by the fictional P. D. Q. Bach.

Schickele was born in Ames, Iowa, to Alsatian immigrant parents, and brought up in Washington, D.C., and Fargo, North Dakota, where he studied composition with Sigvald Thompson. Graduating from Fargo Central High in 1952 and then graduating with a degree in music from Swarthmore College in 1957, he was the first student at Swarthmore and the only student in his class with such a degree. He graduated from the Juilliard School with an M.S. in musical composition; in the ensuing years he has frequently cited Roy Harris as the most influential of his teachers.

Schickele has composed more than 100 original works for symphony orchestra, choral groups, chamber ensemble, voice, film (e.g. Silent Running, and animated adaptations of Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen), and television. He has also written music for school bands, as well as a number of folk musicians, most notably Joan Baez (for whom he also orchestrated and arranged three albums during the mid-1960s, Noël, Joan, and Baptism). He has also written a number of musicals, and has organized numerous concert performances as both musical director and performer. Schickele is active on the international and North American concert circuit.

Friedrich "Fritz" Karl Otto Wunderlich (September 26, 1930 – September 17, 1966) was a German lyric tenor, famed for his singing of the Mozart repertory and Italian and German opera and lieder. He died in an accident when he was only 35. In a survey published in the BBC Music Magazine of April 2008, Wunderlich was voted the fourth greatest tenor of all time.

Fritz Wunderlich was born in Kusel in the Palatinate. His mother was a violinist and his father was a choir-master. For a short time, the family kept the inn "Emrichs Bräustübl". Fritz's father lost his job due to pressure imposed upon him by local Nazis, in addition to suffering from a severe battlefield injury. He committed suicide when Fritz was five years old.

The story regarding Wunderlich's discovery parallels many of his contemporaries (notably Nicolai Gedda and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau). As a young man Wunderlich worked in a bakery. At the insistence of neighbors and passers-by who had witnessed his musical gifts and beautiful voice, Wunderlich decided to begin studies in music. He managed to obtain a scholarship in order to pursue his studies at the Freiburg Music Academy where he studied French horn and voice.

P. D. Q. Bach is a fictitious composer invented by musical satirist "Professor" Peter Schickele. In a gag that Schickele has developed over a five-decade-long career, he performs "discovered" works of this forgotten member of the Bach family. Schickele's music combines parodies of musicological scholarship, the conventions of Baroque and classical music, and slapstick comedy.

The name "P. D. Q." is a parody of the three-part names given to some members of the Bach family that are commonly reduced to initials, such as C. P. E., for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. PDQ is an initialism for "pretty damn quick".

On several recordings Schickele states that he is a professor at the fictitious University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. The city of Hoople, North Dakota actually exists, but it is in the northeastern part of the state.

Schickele regularly tours, and has recorded on Vanguard and Telarc labels.

Schickele gives a humorous fictional biography of the composer with facts such as the following: