The gray wolf, grey wolf, or common wolf (Canis lupus) is the largest extant member of the dog family of mammals, the Canidae. Though once abundant over much of Eurasia, North Africa and North America, the gray wolf inhabits a reduced portion of its former range due to widespread destruction of its habitat, human encroachment, and the resulting human-wolf encounters that sparked broad extirpation. Although the species still faces some threats, it is relatively widespread with a stable population trend and has therefore been assessed as Least Concern by IUCN since 2004. Today, wolves are protected in some areas, hunted for sport in others, or may be subject to population control or extermination as threats to livestock, people, and pets. They occur primarily but not exclusively in wilderness and remote areas.

The gray wolf has a slender but powerful build. Its head is large and heavy, with wide foreheads, strong jaws and long and blunt muzzles. The ears are relatively small and triangular and the limbs are long and robust, with comparatively small paws. The animal's size varies depending on the region, with northern wolves being larger. Despite its name, the gray wolf's coat colour ranges from almost pure white to black. Wolves are social predators that live in nuclear families consisting of a mated pair, their offspring and, occasionally, adopted immature wolves.

Maurizio Pollini (b. January 5, 1942) is an Italian classical pianist.

Pollini was born in Milan to the Italian rationalist architect Gino Pollini. Maurizio studied piano first with Carlo Lonati, until the age of 13, then with Carlo Vidusso, until he was 18. He received a diploma from the Milan Conservatory and won both the International Ettore Pozzoli Piano Competition in Seregno (Italy) in 1959 and the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1960. Arthur Rubinstein, who led the jury, declared Pollini the winner of the competition, saying: "that boy can play the piano better than any of us". Soon afterwards, he studied with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.

Since the mid-1960s, he has given recitals and appeared with major orchestras in Europe, the United States, and the Far East. He made his American debut in 1968 and his first tour of Japan in 1974.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Pollini was a left-wing political acitivist. He collaborated with Luigi Nono in such works as Como una ola fuerza y luz (1972), which was to mourn the assassination of Luciano Cruz, a leader of the Chilean Revolutionary Front. He performed with Claudio Abbado at La Scala in a cycle of concerts for students and workers, in an attempt to build a new public as they believed that art should be for everybody.

Hugo Wolf (13 March 1860 – 22 February 1903) was an Austrian composer of Slovene origin, particularly noted for his art songs, or lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Romantic music, somewhat related to that of the Second Viennese School in concision but utterly unrelated in technique.

Though he had several bursts of extraordinary productivity, particularly in 1888 and 1889, depression frequently interrupted his creative periods, and his last composition was written in 1898, before he suffered a mental collapse caused by syphilis.

Hugo Wolf was born in Windischgrätz (now Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia), then a part of the Austrian Empire. From his maternal side, he was related to Herbert von Karajan. He spent most of his life in Vienna, becoming a representative of "New German" trend in lieder, a trend which followed from the expressive, chromatic, and dramatic musical innovations of Richard Wagner.

A child prodigy, Wolf was taught piano and violin by his father beginning at the age of four, and once in primary school studied piano and music theory with Sebastian Weixler. However, subjects other than music failed to hold his interest; he was dismissed from the first secondary school he attended as being "wholly inadequate", left another over his difficulties in the compulsory Latin studies, and after a falling-out with a professor who commented on his "damned music", quit the last. From there, he went to the Vienna Conservatory to the disappointment of his father, who had hoped Wolf would not try to make his living from music; again, however, he was dismissed for "breach of discipline", though the often-rebellious Wolf would claim he quit in frustration over the school's conservatism.

Erna Berger (19 October 1900 – 14 June 1990), was a prominent German coloratura lyric soprano. She is most famous for her Queen of the Night and her Konstanze.

Along with Frida Leider, Elisabeth Rethberg, Meta Seinemeyer, Tiana Lemnitz, Elisabeth Grümmer, Hilde Gueden, Lotte Lehmann, Martha Mödl and Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, she adorned the ranks of the most prominent German sopranos who were active during the decades following World War I. She was highly thought of by the great operatic and orchestral conductors Wilhelm Furtwängler and Arturo Toscanini.

Born in Dresden, Germany, Berger spent some years as a child in India and South America. She lived there later on as well, working as a clerk and a piano teacher, before borrowing enough money for the trip back to Germany. At the age of 26, she was able to secure a position as a soubrette soprano at the Semper Opera in Dresden, but her talent soon outgrew this post. She later held leading positions at the Vienna State Opera, the Berlin State Opera, and the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Berger also gave concerts in Japan, America, and Australia.

Joyce Arleen Auger (or Augér) (September 13, 1939 – June 10, 1993) was an American soprano singer, admired for her coloratura voice and interpretations of works by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Monteverdi, Gluck, and Mozart.

Auger was born in South Gate, California and lived in Hartsdale, New York. She learned piano and violin as a child. She received a BA in Education from California State University at Long Beach in 1963, and her first job was as a kindergarten and first grade teacher.

Between 1965-67, she studied voice with tenor Ralph Errolle in Evanston, Illinois, and began her professional singing career after winning the I. Viktor Fuchs Vocal Competition in Los Angeles in 1967, which brought her some singing engagements and airfare to Vienna; she also appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at this time. She was signed by the Vienna Staatsoper soon after her arrival there despite her lack of knowledge of the German language, after impressing Josef Krips, remaining with the company for seven years. Her debut was in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte under Krips. She made her American debut with the same opera in 1969, with the New York City Opera. Her Metropolitan Opera debut was as Marzelline in Fidelio, under Karl Böhm.