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He is often called “The Father of Czech Music” and yet for much of his life Bedřich Smetana took musical inspiration from beyond his homeland. He also did not learn to speak his native tongue until he was almost 40 years old ...

In an era when women weren’t supposed to play church organs, compose symphonies, or express political opinions, Elfrida Andrée did all three – while also moonlighting as a feminist agitator and Sweden’s first female telegraph operator ...

William Henry Fry had a low opinion of American music and a correspondingly high one of himself. "Music is at a miserably low ebb in the theatre and concert room,” he once said of his homeland. He bemoaned America’s general musical illiteracy, claiming there were "not twelve persons in the twenty four millions ...

In the 1820s, Gioachino Rossini had been an unstoppable force of nature, turning out brilliant and vibrant operas at a mindboggling rate. His opéras bouffes in particular had set a gold standard for the rest of Europe. But then, not long after completing his masterly Guillaume Tell and still well short of his fortieth birthday ...

Cesare Pugni was a highly accomplished composer of ballet music who never quite mastered the rest of his life. Supremely talented as he was, he was prone to destructive habits and very good at blowing up his career from time to time. Where he succeeded, he often did so in spite of himself ...