An impresario (from Italian: impresa, meaning "an enterprise or undertaking") is a person who organizes and often finances concerts, plays or operas; analogous to a film producer in filmmaking, television production and an angel investor in business. The origin of the term is to be found in the social and economic world of Italian opera, where from the mid-18th century to the 1830s, the impresario was the key figure in the organization of a lyric season. The owners of the theatre, usually noble amateurs, charged the impresario with hiring a composer, for until the 1850s operas on stage were expected to be new, as well as gathering the necessary costumes, sets, orchestra, and singers, all while assuming considerable financial risks. In 1786 Mozart satirized the stress and emotional mayhem in a single-act farce Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario). Antonio Vivaldi was unusual in acting as impresario as well as composer: in 1714 he managed seasons at Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice, where his opera Orlando finto pazzo was followed by numerous others.

Jacob "Jake" Kaufman (also known as virt) (born April 3, 1981) is an American video game music composer. After starting out creating arrangements and remixes of video game soundtracks, he began his commercial composing career in 2000 with the score to a port of Q*Bert. He continued to compose music for games for the next couple of years, working primarily with handheld video games. In 2002, he set up the website VGMix, which hosts video game music remixes, and continues to administer it. His career began to take off over the next few years, resulting in him transitioning jobs into a full-time freelance composer by 2005. Since then he has worked on several big-name projects such as Contra 4 and Red Faction: Guerrilla.

Jake Kaufman was born in America on April 3, 1981. Kaufman dropped out of high school, with what he describes as "a total lack of work ethic and no concept of timeliness or organization". He spent the next few years composing arrangements and remixes of video game music under the alias "virt". In 2000, Kaufman broke into the video game industry as a composer; his first work was the Game Boy Color port of Q*Bert. Over the next few years, he composed the music to several Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games. In 2002, Kaufman was one of the co-founders of the website VGMix, which hosts video game music remixes. VGMix has been described as being just as influential as OverClocked ReMix, the other major video game music arrangement hosting site.

Frances Ginsberg (March 11, 1955 – December 24, 2010) was an American opera singer. Opera News magazine described her as "a lirico-spinto soprano of striking temperament whose vivid style made her an audience favorite at New York City Opera and other U.S. companies in the 1980s and 1990s." She particularly excelled in the operas of Giacomo Puccini and Giuseppe Verdi.

Ginsberg was born to Jewish parents in St. Louis, Missouri in 1955. In 1973 she graduated from Ladue Horton Watkins High School in Ladue, Missouri, and in 1979 she graduated from the University of Kansas with fine arts degrees in theatre and voice. She then pursued further studies at the Lyric Opera of Chicago's Center for American Artists. She later studied opera privately with Carlo Bergonzi, Renata Tebaldi and Eve Queler. She was also a pupil for many years of conductor Marco Munari of La Scala with whom she studied while she was living in Milan.

While still a college student, Ginsberg made her professional opera debut in 1977 at the Santa Fe Opera as the milliner in the United States premiere of Nino Rota's The Italian Straw Hat. Her first major success came in 1986 when she made her debut at the New York City Opera (NYCO) in the dual roles of Margherita and Elena in Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele. She subsequently appeared with the NYCO as Donna Elvira in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni, Mimì in Giacomo Puccini's La bohème, and Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata. In 1990 she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Rosalinde in Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus.

Frank Turner (born 28 December 1981) is an Englishfolk/punk singer-songwriter from Meonstoke, Winchester. Initially the vocalist of post-hardcore band Million Dead, Turner embarked upon a primarily acoustic-based solo career following the band's split in 2005. To date, Turner has released four solo albums, two rarities compilation albums and four EPs. Turner began recording for his new album England Keep My Bones, in January 2011. It was released on 6 June 2011 in the UK, and 7 June 2011 worldwide.

Turner was educated on a scholarship at Eton College, where he studied alongside Prince William, and later went on to attend the London School of Economics where he read History. His father, Roger Turner, is the son of Sir Mark Turner, formerly chairman of high street retailer BHS, and had himself also attended Eton before becoming a City investment banker, while his mother, Jane, the daughter of a bishop, is a primary school headmistress.

Turner's musical career began at school, with the short-lived alternative band Kneejerk. The band released three records and played several shows around the UK (including a support slot for Boysetsfire), before disbanding in November 2001. The last record, their only full length, was entitled 'The half life of kissing' and was released by Yorkshire DIY hardcore label Sakari Empire after the band had actually broken up.

Domenico Cimarosa (17 December 1749, Aversa, Province of Caserta – 11 January 1801, Venice) was an Italian opera composer of the Neapolitan school. He wrote more than eighty operas during his lifetime, including his masterpiece, Il matrimonio segreto (1792).

Cimarosa was born in Aversa in Campania.

His parents were poor, but, anxious to give their son a good education, they sent him to a free school connected with one of the monasteries in Naples after moving to that city. The organist of the monastery, Padre Polcano, was struck by the boy's intellect, and voluntarily instructed him in the elements of music and also in the ancient and modern literature of his country. Because of his influence, Cimarosa obtained a scholarship at the musical institute of Santa Maria di Loreto in Naples, where he remained for eleven years, chiefly studying with great masters of the old Italian school; Niccoló Piccinni, Antonio Maria Gaspare Sacchini, and other musicians of repute are mentioned among his teachers.