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Composer, considered one of the greatest opera composers in history. It is said that he decided to dedicate himself to opera in 1876 after having attended a performance of Verdi's Aida in Pisa. Manon Lescaut, La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La Fanciulla del West, Gianni Schicchi, and Turandot are among his most famous operas.

Poet, composer, and librettist connected with the Scapigliatura movement. Younger brother of the architect Camillo, he is known above all for his opera libretti, especially those written for Verdi (Otello and Falstaff) and for his opera Mefistofele.

Violinist, singer, and composer known above all as the most famous author of songs for voice and piano, to texts written even by poets like Fogazzaro and d'Annunzio.

Writer and poet whose first great literary success was his first novel, Il Piacere (1889). In 1897 he began an affair with the celebrated actress Eleonora Duse, for whom he wrote the tragedies La Città Morta, Francesca da Rimini, and La Figlia di Iorio. When Italy entered the First World War in 1915, d'Annunzio enlisted as a volunteer and took part in several naval and air attacks.

Queen of Italy, consort of Umberto I of Savoy, whom she married in 1868, and then Queen Mother when the throne was inherited by her son Victor Emanuel III. She dedicated herself to charitable works and to the development of the arts and culture, encouraging artists and writers and founding cultural institutions.

Architect who planned the Giuseppe Verdi Rest Home for Musicians. He participated in the Scapigliatura literary movement, debuting with Vain Little Stories (1876), followed by Senso (1883) and New Vain Little Stories. Luchino Visconti based the screenplay for his famous film Senso on Boito's short story of the same name.

Considered one of the greatest lyric tenors in the history of opera, his first triumph took place in Naples in 1914, in Tosca. In 1919 he moved to the United States, where he stayed for over 15 years, dividing his time between Chicago and New York. Besides being a singer, he was also a film actor and became, in Hollywood, the star of “white telephone” cinema.

Son of Victor Emanuel III and Queen Elena, he married Princess Maria José of Belgium in 1930. After his father's abdication, he was king of Italy from 9 May to 13 June 1946 (for which he was called the “May King”). The constitutional referendum of 1946 led to the birth of the Republic, and Umberto went into exile in Portugal.

In 1919 he founded the Italian Combat Groups, which became the National Fascist Party in 1921. He was first asked to form a government on 30 October 1922. Following the disputed electoral success of 1924, he established a dictatorship (January 1925). In 1940 he entered the Second World War as an ally of Hitler's Germany. Following the defeats suffered by the Italian Armed Forces, and forced into a minority position during a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council on 24 July 1943, he was arrested, by order of the king, and then taken to Campo Imperatore. Freed by the Germans, he established the Italian Social Republic in the north of Italy. On 28 April 1945 he was discovered and captured by partisans, who shot him together with his companion Claretta Petacci.

Composer and conductor, he is known above all for his symphonic poems (Macbeth, Don Juan, Also Sprach Zarathustra, and Don Quixote, among others) and his operas (Salome, Elektra, etc.)

Pope Pius XI nominated him archbishop of Milan on 26 June 1929 and cardinal on 15 July 1929. Taking as a model St. Carlo Borromeo, one of his most illustrious predecessors, he was assiduous in carrying out pastoral visits in his diocese, with which he remained until 1954. He was beatified by John Paul II in 1996.

Composer and conductor, he achieved remarkable success in 1890 with his first masterpiece, Cavalleria Rusticana, which, however, was never equaled by his successive operas. Immediately following the premiere of one of Mascagni's operas, Verdi wrote to him: “You are the only one who can still keep the flag of our art flying high.”

Son of Umberto I of Savoy and Margherita of Savoy, at his birth he was given the title of Prince of Naples. His long reign (46 years) witnessed, in addition to two world wars, the proclamation of universal male suffrage (1912), the birth and collapse of the fascist state (1925-43), and the maximum extension of reunited Italy's territorial boundaries.

Economist, politician, and journalist, he was the second President of the Italian Republic (1948-55). Editor of La Stampa and the Corriere della Sera until 1926, he gave up his journalistic activities following the advent of fascism. Governor of the Bank of Italy from 1945 to '48, he was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly in 1946 as a representative of the National Democratic Union. He was Minister of Finance and of the Treasury and then Minister of the Budget. His economic policies in those years, characterized by a reduction in domestic taxes, created the basis for the economic boom of the 1950s and '60s.

Nominated archbishop of Milan in 1954 and cardinal in 1958 by the newly elected Pope John XXIII, he was actively involved in the preparations for the Second Vatican Council, which opened in October 1962 and was suddenly interrupted on 13 June 1963 because of the death of Pope John. The brief conclave that followed ended with the election, on 21 June 1963, of Montini, who assumed the name of Paul VI.

Wife of the composer Francesco Cilea, who wrote such operas as Gina (1889), Tilda (1892), L'Arlesiana (1897), Adriana Lecouvreur (1902), and Gloria (1907).

The soprano debuted on the radio in 1932 in Nino Cattozzo's I Misteri Dolorosi, followed, in 1933, by Puccini's Gianni Schicchi at Turin's Teatro Vittorio Emanuele. Her career was interrupted by her marriage in 1941, but ten years later, at Francesco Cilea's explicit request, she returned to the stage, interpreting Adriana Lecouvreur with great success at Brescia's Teatro Grande: her success was tremendous. Critics maintain that her Medea is the only one that can be compared to that of Callas. She retired from the stage in 1981 with Poulenc's La Voix Humaine in Verona.

Bulgarian-born mezzo-soprano. She debuted as Maddalena in Verdi's Rigoletto in 1932 and then spent 20 seasons at La Scala. After retiring from the stage she became a film actress from 1963 to '68.

Mezzo-soprano. She began at La Scala in 1935, but her first leading role came only in 1947, in Mignon, and from that moment on her career took off. She was a great friend and colleague of Maria Callas: their duet in Donizetti's Anna Bolena at La Scala in 1957 remains memorable. Equally telling is her Adalgisa in Bellini's Norma, which she sang alongside Callas from 1950 to '65. She said farewell to the stage in 1966 and withdrew to private life.

Second child of Arturo Toscanini, she founded the Friends of La Scala Association in 1943 and worked for the reconstruction of the Milanese theater. During the Second World War she assisted the Resistance, making it possible for Italian officers interned in Switzerland to return to the country; among others, General Raffaele Cadorna wished to return to reinforce the units of military origin within the national liberation movement. Her famous father said of her, “She is the only work I've never learned to lead.”

German pianist, he became famous especially for his interpretations of Beethoven's and Brahms's works, which allowed him to bring out not only his flawless technique but also his deep romantic sensibility. He was among the pioneers of recording - the first to record a concerto for piano and orchestra (Edvard Grieg's Concerto in A minor, in 1909) and all of Chopin's Etudes (1928).

Turkish-born soprano, her Italian debut took place at Naples's Teatro San Carlo in 1953, in the role of Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana. She appeared at La Scala in fifteen seasons and nineteen operas between 1957 and '83, making a mark as one of the most representative sopranos of her day. She left the stage in 1983 to dedicate herself entirely to teaching, and during the following decade she was called upon by Riccardo Muti to direct the Scala Academy, to instruct promising new opera talents.

He was ordained a priest in the Milan cathedral in 1926. Nominated auxiliary archbishop of Milan by John XXIII, he received the episcopal consecration from Cardinal Montini at the church of St. Ambrose on 7 December 1960, and he chose as his motto Veritas et amor. On 25 February 1965 Montini, who had since become Pope Paul VI, nominated him cardinal, thus he participated in the conclaves of 1978 for the election of Pope John Paul I and John Paul II. He left his position on 29 December 1979.

Soprano. She was described by Arturo Toscanini as having “the voice of an angel,” for the purity and beauty of her sound. She debuted in 1944 as Elena in Boito's Mefistofele and then interpreted Desdemona in Otello, Mimì in La Bohème, Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Manon Lescaut, and Violetta in La Traviata. Rosa Cilea, the composer's widow, gave her a gold medal when she attended one of Tebaldi's performances as Adriana Lecouvreur. She sang her last opera in 1973 at New York's Metropolitan Opera, after which she dedicated herself to giving concerts all over the world. She retired from the stage in 1976 following a benefit concert at La Scala for the victims of the Friuli earthquake.

Born in France to Italian parents, she received a diploma in piano and began her career as a concert artist. In 1923 she met and married the French tenor Maurice Sens, who urged her to study singing. She debuted with great success at La Scala in 1927, interpreting Freia in Wagner's Das Rheingold. She sang at the Milanese theater throughout the 1930s and ”40s in a great variety of roles, making a mark as the most important dramatic soprano of the day. Her name remains tied to the role of Turandot, of which she was considered one of the greatest interpreters. In the 1940s her fame extended abroad to Paris, London, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. In 1948 a serious car accident forced her to withdraw from the stage; she dedicated herself to teaching at various conservatories and finally moved permanently to Milan, where she held master classes at La Scala's school.

He entered the Society of Jesus in 1944 and received holy orders on 13 July 1952. He graduated in Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1958 and in Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in the early 1960s. He was Rector of the latter from 1969 to '78 and then of the former from 1978 to '79. In December 1979 Pope John Paul II nominated him archbishop of Milan; he was ordained a bishop the following January and elevated to the rank of cardinal on 2 February 1983. He retired in July 2002. Since then he has spent most of his time in Jerusalem, dedicating himself to bible studies.

He studied viola and conducting at Rome's Santa Cecilia Conservatory and then played in the viola section of the Santa Cecilia National Academy orchestra in the 1930s. He worked as a radio orchestra conductor from 1946 to '51, then moved on to La Scala in Milan, which he left in 1955. He debuted in the United States with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; from 1973 to '76 he conducted the Vienna Symphony; in 1978 he replaced Zubin Mehta at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he remained until 1984, moving then to the Philharmonia Orchestra of London. He dealt mainly with 19th-century repertoire with rare but important ventures into the first half of the 20th century, preferring composers of great formal rigor and expressive intensity, such as Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Ravel.

Having received a diploma in composition and conducting from Milan's Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, in 1968 he became Principal Conductor of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, a position he maintained until 1980. In 1971 he was invited by Herbert von Karajan to conduct at the Salzburg Festival, which began a happy relationship that included a celebration, in 2001, of a 30-year collaboration with the Austrian festival. He was Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1980 to '92. From 1986 to 2005 he was Music Director of La Scala, where he conducted, among other operas, the Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy, the Wagner tetralogy, and works by less often performed composers such as Gluck, Cherubini, and Spontini, not to mention Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites. His triumphal reopening of the renovated La Scala, on 7 December 2004, with Antonio Salieri's L'Europa Riconosciuta, remains memorable. Riccardo Muti has conducted many of the world's most prestigious orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Philharmonia of London, and, of course, the Vienna Philharmonic, ever since the 1971 Salzburg Festival. In 2003 he conducted the much awaited reopening concert of Venice's Teatro “La Fenice”.

He was one of the most beloved tenors of the postwar period. He debuted as Des Grieux in Massenet's Manon on 20 April 1946 at Reggio Emilia, and he made his La Scala debut in the same role on 15 March of the following year. Barely a year later he appeared at New York's Metropolitan Opera as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's Rigoletto. A fundamental element of Di Stefano's career was his fortunate encounter and long artistic collaboration with Maria Callas: the two sang together for the first time at Sà£o Paulo, Brazil, in 1951, in a performance of La Traviata conducted by Tullio Serafin, and in the following years they worked together in many operas and concerts, also making recordings that have become historic for their documentary value.

This ballerina and choreographer graduated from the Scala ballet school and debuted in Naples in 1923 as protagonist of Biancifiori's The Dolls' Fairy. In 1933 she participated in the first Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, in the production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that Max Reinhardt directed in the Boboli Gardens. In 1944 she accepted the task of reconstituting the corps de ballet of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, and in 1950 that of reviving its school, which is the oldest in Italy (founded in 1812).

The director, playwright, actor, and set designer Dario Fo won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1997. He is famous for his political and social theatrical texts. In 1950 he began to work for the radio (later also television) as author of and actor in satirical pieces. On 24 June 1954 he married his colleague, the actress Franca Rame, with whom he worked on the RAI television variety show “Canzonissima” from 1958 to '68. But the censors intervened so often that they abandoned television in favor of the theater. In 1969 Fo staged, with great success, Mistero Buffo, an imaginative re-elaboration of ancient texts in Grammelot, a theatrical language that he derived from the Commedia dell'Arte tradition, consisting of sounds that imitate the rhythm and intonation of real language. (Fo used Padano, which imitated the various dialects spoken in the Po Valley.)

In 1958, this daughter of theater people founded - together with her husband - the Dario Fo-Franca Rame Company, which achieved huge commercial success within Italy's public theater circuit. In 1968 she founded the New Stage collective and then the Commune group, performing at the Italian Communist Recreational Association circles and in places that until then had not been used for live entertainment; there she interpreted texts - some of them ferocious - that were satirical or in opposition to official politics. Noteworthy are Accidental Death of an Anarchist and You Don't Have to Pay! You Don't Have to Pay! Beginning in the late 1970s, Rame participated in the feminist movement, performing her own pieces, such as Nothing but Home, Bed, and Church; Fat Is Beautiful!; and The Mother. In the 2006 election she was a candidate in the Italy of Values party and was elected senator in the Piedmont region.

Baritone. After having studied singing in Padua, he debuted at Spoleto in 1961 in Il Trovatore. A specialist in the Verdi and Donizetti repertoire, Bruson is considered one of the most important opera singers of our day. His career has taken him to the world's greatest theaters. Among his most important interpretations were his Iago in Otello conducted by Carlos Kleiber at La Scala, Nabucco conducted by Riccardo Muti, Don Giovanni at Turin's Teatro Regio, and I Due Foscari at La Scala. But the role he loves best is that of the evil Baron Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca, which he has performed 150 times.

Having graduated in 1954 from La Scala's School of Dance, she became a soloist in 1956 and prima ballerina in '58. Her appearances were numerous, from Juliet in Cranko's Romeo and Juliet to Elvira in Massine's Don Giovanni. From the late 1950s through the '70s, she danced with many international ensembles: the London Festival Ballet, Royal Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, and American Ballet Theatre. Giselle was her most important role, and she performed it with such exceptional partners as Rudolf Nureyev, Vladimir Vasiliev, Henning Kronstam, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and, more than anyone else, Erik Bruhn. She currently directs the corps de ballet of the Rome Opera.

The economist Carlo Azeglio Ciampi was the tenth President of Italy (from 18 May 1999 to 10 May 2006). In 1941 he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Pisa's Scuola Normale, where he met Franca Pilla, whom he married in 1946. Having obtained a Master's degree in jurisprudence, he was urged by his wife to apply for a job with Bank of Italy, of which he was Governor from 1979 to '93. From April 1993 until May '94 he was prime minister in a transitional government - the first prime minister in the Republic's history who was not a member of Parliament. Upon completing his seven-year mandate as President of Italy, he became a senator for life.

Admired for his lyric-dramatic tenor voice and for his considerable acting abilities, he has worked in the Italian (Il trovatore, Don Carlos, Otello, Tosca, Turandot), French (Faust, Werther), and German (Lohengrin, Parsifal) repertoires and has occasionally sung baritone roles (The Barber of Seville), in addition to several tenor and baritone roles in various zarzuelas. His repertoire is one of the broadest and most eclectic of all time - 126 roles as of June 2008. In the 1990s his fame reached beyond the world of opera thanks to the celebrated Three Tenors concerts, which he gave together with his colleagues Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras. Since 1973 he has performed regularly as a conductor with some of the most important international opera ensembles. He is currently General Director of the Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera.

His debut as Flavio in Norma attracted the attention of the famous soprano Montserrat Caballé, who was singing the title role. She invited him to sing with her in Gaetano Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, and after that the two singers performed more than fifteen operas together. In 1972, Carreras debuted in America as Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly; in 1974 at the Vienna Staatsoper as the Duke of Mantua, at Covent Garden as Alfredo in La Traviata, and at the Metropolitan Opera as Cavaradossi in Tosca. The following year, Carreras debuted at La Scala as Riccardo in Un Ballo in Maschera. At the age of 28 he already had a repertoire of 24 operas. In 1990, following a long illness, he sang together with Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo on the occasion of the opening concert of the World Cup soccer championship in Rome.

Sorpano. Her repertoire comprises about 70 operas, from Monteverdi to Prokofiev, including Baroque, Mozart, and Verdi roles. Memorable collaborations have included those with Riccardo Muti at La Scala (Don Carlos, Falstaff, Requiem, Così fan tutte, and Marriage of Figaro), with Claudio Abbado at the Vienna Staatsoper (Simon Boccanegra, Don Carlos, Tosca and Aida), at the Metropolitan in New York (Pagliacci, La Bohème,and Andrea Chenier), at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and in Dresden with Giuseppe Sinopoli (Aida and Requiem), at the Bavarian Staatsoper in Munich with Zubin Mehta (Falstaff, Requiem, Tosca, and Don Giovanni), at the Arena di Verona with Georges Prêtre and Zubin Mehta in the Verdi Requiem and other productions, including Otello, Aida, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly. During the 2006-07 season she returned to the Liceu in Barcelona in Manon Lescaut, staged by Liliana Cavani and conducted by Renato Palumbo.

Ballerina. Trained at La Scala's ballet school and then at the Bolshoi in Moscow, she performed Mario Pistoni's ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin, with music by Béla Bartók, at La Scala in 1968, and in 1972 became the company's prima ballerina and later étoile. At Maurice Béjart's invitation, she danced in the Ninth Symphony, Bolero, Romeo and Juliet, Symphonie pour un Homme Seul, and Ce Que l'Amour Me Dit. Among her best interpretations, L'Après-midi d'un Faune (1973), Sonata dell'Angoscia (1975), Cinderella (1977), The Taming of the Shrew (1980), I Promessi Sposi (1985), and Roland Petit's Blue Angel (1988) are particularly noteworthy.

He studied conducting at the Douai Conservatory and then with André Cluytens at the Paris Conservatory. After graduating he began to conduct at various French opera houses before debuting at Paris's Opéra-Comique with Richard Strauss's Capriccio in 1956; his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, took place in 1961. Beginning in the late 1960s he was repeatedly invited to La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera. He was one of Maria Callas's favorite conductors; they performed together in the theater and recorded some immortal operas (Carmen and Tosca). On 1 January 2008 he became the first French conductor to lead the Vienna Philharmonic's traditional New Year's concert, including a number of works that clearly refer to his native land (the Marseillaise among them).

Soprano. She was a child prodigy who was performing in public at the age of ten, singing in a RAI competition “Un bel dì vedremo” from Madama Butterfly, which she had learned by ear. The great tenor Beniamino Gigli, who had heard her in a private audition in Rome, advised her to study singing. She debuted on 3 February 1955 at Modena's Teatro Comunale in the role of Micaà«la in Bizet's Carmen, and she again interpreted this character at her La Scala debut in 1963. Her first great success as a lead singer at La Scala came the following year in La Bohème, conducted by Karajan, and the role of Mimì has always been her most acclaimed one.

Considered one of the best mezzo-sopranos, she debuted as Azucena in Il Trovatore after having won the international Adriano Belli competition in Spoleto. She achieved great success in Aida at Covent Garden and at her debut at the Staatsoper-unter-den-Linden in Berlin. She has been an exceptional interpreter of the role of Eboli in Don Carlo in some of the world's greatest opera companies, including the Metropolitan, Bavarian State Opera, Monte Carlo Opéra, Rome Opera, Vienna Staatsoper, and Zurich Opera.