[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nvg8eQnjPs"] Georg Friedrich Händel was born Halle (Germany), 23 February 1685, in the family of a barber-surgeon who intended him for the law. He started to practise music clandestinely, but his father was encouraged to allow him to study and he became a pupil of Zachow, the principal organist in Halle. When he was 18 [...]
[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqi4C36AaTw"] Mozart set to work on “Figaro” in 1785, having at this date been ordered by the Emperor Joseph to write an opera for Vienna. Da Ponte was again the librettist, founding his text on Beaumarchais’ famous comedy, “Le Mariage de Figaro,” which had lately been creating a stir in Paris. The opera has no [...]
[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI39fiepzf8"] The youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach by his second wife, Johann Christian Bach was born in Leipzig in 1735 and on the death of his father in 1750 moved to Berlin to live with his brother C.P.E. Bach. He later travelled to Italy, where he studied with the famous Padre Martini, became a [...]
