Fernando Corena (1916 - 1984)

Fernando Corena was born in Geneva, Switzerland, to a Turkish father (the name was Korena) and an Italian mother. He studied theology at the Fribourg University, hoping to become a priest. After winning a vocal contest, he turned his attention to music. He first studied in his native Geneva, 1937-38. He was then noticed by […]

Giorgio Tozzi (1923 - 2011)

Giorgio Tozzi was born George John Tozzi in Chicago, Illinois. He studied at DePaul University with Rosa Raisa, Giacomo Rimini and John Daggett Howell. He later studied singing in New York City with Beverley Peck Johnson. He made his professional debut in the Broadway production of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia in 1948 as Tarquinius. […]

Fritz Reiner (1888 - 1963)

Fritz Reiner was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary into a secular Jewish family that resided in the Pest area of the city. After preliminary studies in law at his father’s urging, Reiner pursued the study of piano, piano pedagogy, and composition at the Franz Liszt Academy. During his last two years there, his piano teacher was […]

Ernst Haefliger (1919 - 2007)

Ernst Haefliger (6 July 1919 – 17 March 2007) was a Swiss tenor. ErnstHaefliger was born in Davos, Switzerland and studied at the Zürich Conservatory. He studied with Fernando Carpi in Geneva and Julius Patzak in Vienna. In 1943, Haefliger sang for the first time the Evangelist in Bach’s St John Passion in Zurich. After this […]

Lois Marshall (1924 - 1997)

Lois Catherine Marshall, CC (January 29, 1924–February 19, 1997) was a Canadian soprano. Her husband, Weldon Kilburn, had been her early coach and piano accompanist. Born in Toronto, Lois Marshall “began voice studies at age 12 with Weldon Kilburn (at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto), her accompanist and coach until 1971 and to whom […]

Maureen Forrester (1930 - 2010)

Maureen Forrester was born and grew up in Montreal, one of four children of Thomas Forrester, a Scottish cabinetmaker, and his Irish-born wife, the former May Arnold. She sang in church and radio choirs. At age 13, she dropped out of school to help support the family, working as a secretary at Bell Telephone. When her […]

Beverly Sills (1929 - 2007)

Beverly Sills was born Belle Miriam Silverman in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York City, to Shirley Bahn (née Sonia Markovna), a musician, and Morris Silverman, an insurance broker. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Odessa, Ukraine (then part of Russia) and Bucharest, Romania. She was raised in Brooklyn, where she was known, among friends, as […]

Claramae Turner (1920 - 2013)

Born in the high desert, outside Dinuba, California, to Reed Ross Haas and Anna Marie Helen Somma Haas, Claramae Turner began her career at the Bush Street Music Hall in San Francisco, where she sang the contralto leads in Gilbert and Sullivan operas; at the same time she joined the chorus of San Francisco Opera. […]

Norman Treigle (1927 - 1975)

Norman Treigle (pronounced tray-gull) was born in New Orleans, the fifth and final child of a poor carpenter and his wife. Following his 1946 marriage to the former Loraine Siegel, the bass-baritone began vocal studies with the contralto Elisabeth Wood. In 1947, he made his operatic debut with the New Orleans Opera Association, as the […]

Julius Rudel (1921 - 2014)

Julius Rudel (6 March 1921 – 26 June 2014) was an American opera and orchestra conductor. He was born in Vienna and was a student at the city’s Academy of Music. He emigrated to the United States at the age of 17 in 1938 after the country was annexed by Germany. After 1944, he began a […]

Heather Begg (1932 - 2009)

Born in Nelson, New Zealand in 1932, Heather Begg studied in Auckland with Sister Mary Leo and at the New South Wales State Conservatorium, during which time she won the 1955 Sydney Sun Aria contest. She was engaged as a principal mezzo-soprano with the National Opera of Australia from 1954-56. Her professional debut was as […]

Rosetta Reitz (1924 - 2008)

Reitz was born in Utica, New York on September 28, 1924. She attended the University of Buffalo for one year and the University of Wisconsin–Madison for two years. After leaving college, she moved to Manhattan and worked at the Gotham Book Mart, later opening the Four Seasons, a bookstore in Greenwich Village she operated from […]

Lou Smit (1935 - 2010)

Having tried various businesses and failed, Lou Smit prayed for a solution and saw as an answer from God a call he received from a cousin who served on the Colorado Springs Department suggesting that he apply to serve. Smit fell just short of the department’s minimum height of five feet and nine inches, but […]

Patricia Ramsey (1956 - 2006)

Patricia Ramsey was born in Gilbert, West Virginia, the daughter of Nedra Ellen Ann (née Rymer) (1932–2001) and Donald Ray Paugh (born 1931), an engineer and manager at Union Carbide. She graduated from Parkersburg High School in 1975, and attended West Virginia University, where she belonged to the Alpha Xi Delta sorority, and from which […]

Nellie Grant (1855 - 1922)

Nellie Grant (July 4, 1855 – August 30, 1922) was the third child and only daughter of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant and First Lady Julia Grant. Born near St. Louis, Missouri, Nellie Grant was first named Julia, at the insistence of her father, but was christened Ellen Wrenshall Grant at eighteen months to honor her […]

Frederick Tracy Dent (1820 - 1892)

Frederick Tracy Dent (December 17, 1820–December 23, 1892) was an American general. Born in White Haven, St. Louis County, Missouri, Dent graduated from West Point in 1843. One of Dent’s classmates was Ulysses S. Grant, who married Dent’s sister Julia. The children of Ulysses and Julia Grant included Dent’s namesake, Frederick Dent Grant. Dent was assigned as […]

Enrique Díez Canedo (1879 - 1944)

Enrique Díez Canedo sympathised with Krauseanism and was a denizen of the Ateneo, where he organized a number of acts (homages to Rubén Darío, Benito Pérez Galdós and Mariano de Cavia; and presentations like the one with José María Gabriel y Galán). He frequented the gathering of the Café Regina, where he became friend of […]

Alfonso Reyes (1889 - 1959)

Alfonso Reyes’ parents were Bernardo Reyes and Aurelia Ochoa. His father was in important government positions during the government of Porfirio Díaz, such as the governorship of Nuevo León and the Secretary of War and Navy. Alfonso Reyes was educated primarily in Mexico City. In 1909, he and other like-minded young intellectuals such as Martín Luis Guzmán […]

Mario Benedetti (1920 - 2009)

Mario Benedetti was born in Paso de los Toros in the department of Tacuarembó to Brenno Benedetti (pharmaceutical and chemical winemaker) and Matilde Farrugia, a family of Italian descent. Mario completed six years of primary school at the Deutsche Schule in Montevideo, where he also learned German, which allowed him later to be the first […]

Elena Garro (1916 - 1998)

Elena Garro was born to a Spanish father and a Mexican mother on December 11, 1916 in Puebla, Mexico. Frequently, Elena Garro is said to have been born in 1920, but that is wrong. (Hand Written Original Birth Certificate recorded February 7, 1917, says “11 Diciembre de PROX. Pasado,” which means Dec. 11, 1916: She […]

Juan Rulfo (1917 - 1986)

It was at the University that Juan Rulfo first began writing under the tutelage of a coworker, Efrén Hernández. In 1944, Rulfo had co-founded the literary journal Pan. Later, he was able to advance in his career and travel throughout Mexico as an immigration agent. In 1946, he started as a foreman for Goodrich Euzkadi, […]

Octavio Paz (1914 - 1998)

Octavio Paz was introduced to literature early in his life through the influence of his grandfather’s library, filled with classic Mexican and European literature. During the 1920s, he discovered Gerardo Diego, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Antonio Machado, Spanish writers who had a great influence on his early writings. As a teenager in 1931, Paz published […]

Pina Pellicer (1934 - 1964)

Pina Pellicer was born in Mexico City to César Pellicer Sánchez, a lawyer, and Pilar López de Llergo. Her uncle Carlos Pellicer was a modernist poet. Of her seven siblings, her younger sister Pilar Pellicer also became an actress best known for her roles in numerous telenovelas; another younger sister, Ana, is a sculptor and […]

Paul Shenar (1936 - 1989)

Paul Shenar was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of Mary Rosella (née Puhek) and Eugene Joseph Shenar. Paul Shenar became involved in theatre at an early age, working in Milwaukee playhouse productions. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the United States Air Force. Following his military career he began acting again. Shenar gained […]

Míriam Colón (1936 - 2017)

Míriam Colón was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico. She was a young girl in the 1940s when her recently divorced mother moved the family to a public housing project called Residencial Las Casas in San Juan. She attended the Román Baldorioty de Castro High School in Old San Juan, where she actively participated in the […]

Charles Dubin (1919 - 2011)

Charles Dubin (February 1, 1919 – September 5, 2011) was an American film and television director. From the early 1950s to 1991, Dubin worked in television, directing episodes of Tales of Tomorrow, Omnibus, The Defenders, The Big Valley, The Virginian, Hawaii Five-O, M*A*S*H, Matlock, The Rockford Files, Murder, She Wrote and among other notable series. […]

Geraldine Doyle (1924 - 2010)

Because the “We Can Do It!” poster was created for an internal Westinghouse project, it did not become widely known until the 1980s, when it was rediscovered and used by advocates of women’s equality in the workplace. In 1984, Doyle came across an article in Modern Maturity magazine which showed a photo of an unidentified […]

Harold Dow (1947 - 2010)

Harold Dow was born in Hackensack, New Jersey. He attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Dow had been a correspondent for the CBS TV investigative news series 48 Hours since 1990, after having served as a contributor to the broadcast since its premiere on January 1988. He had been a contributing correspondent for 48 […]

Peter Godfrey (1899 - 1970)

Peter Godfrey began his career as a conjuror, clown, actor and director in repertory theatres around the United Kingdom. However, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the standard repertory plays, being himself attracted to the experimental works of American and Continental directors, and the avant-garde playwrights of the 1920s. To stage such plays, he and his […]

Hayden Rorke (1910 - 1987)

Hayden Rorke was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1910. He was the son of screen and stage actress Margaret Rorke (née Hayden), and he took his stage forename from her maiden name. He attended Brooklyn Preparatory School, a Jesuit school, where he served as president of the Dramatics Society and the Student Government and […]