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Jean-Benjamin de La Borde was a French composer, music historian, publisher and financier.
De La Borde played the violin and trained in composition. In 1748 he composed his first small opera, and in 1751 his opera Le Rossignol ou Le Mariage secret (The Nightingale or The Secret Marriage) was staged in Paris. The prolific composer went on to compose an average of 30 operas a year for 30 years, mostly of a comic nature.
De La Borde was also a prominent cultural figure of his time: he authored Essays on Music, a four-volume collection of songs for solo voice, and initiated the publication of the General and Private Description of France (1781-96).
For several years de La Borde was valet and favorite of Louis XV; he refused to leave France during the Revolution and was arrested and executed by guillotine on July 22, 1794.
August Zeller was an American sculptor and teacher.
An exceptional carver, he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) under Thomas Eakins. He moved to Paris in 1890 to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and studied further in the studio of Auguste Rodin.
His most prominent commissions were for two Civil War monuments: the 96th Pennsylvania Infantry Monument (1888), on the Gettysburg Battlefield; and the Schuylkill County Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument (1891), in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.
Zeller spent his final years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as curator of sculpture at the Carnegie Institute of Fine Arts and as an instructor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.
William Shakespeare was a British poet and playwright and writer.
William's father, John Shakespeare, was a merchant and official in Stratford. There are reports that he was a sailor for a time before joining a theater company in London. Beginning in the 1590s, Shakespeare began writing plays, and in 1593 he published a poem, Venus and Adonis, which became popular. He dedicated it to the Duke of Southampton, who was a philanthropist and patron of talent, and soon his business was booming.
From 1592 to 1600 Shakespeare wrote his dramas and romantic comedies "Richard III", "The Taming of the Shrew", "Romeo and Juliet", "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Merchant of Venice", as well as the comedies "Much Ado About Nothing", "Twelfth Night" and the tragedy "Julius Caesar". The playwright's business was so successful that he even bought a large house in Stratford. In 1599, Shakespeare became one of the owners, playwright and actor of the new theater "Globe". In 1603 King James took Shakespeare's troupe under his direct patronage. In the mature period, the great playwright turned to tragedies, there were "Hamlet", "Othello", "King Lear", "Macbeth" and others.
Although in the 19th century researchers had some doubts about the authorship of many of these works, William Shakespeare is considered the greatest English playwright, one of the best playwrights in the world. His plays have been translated into all major languages and to this day form the basis of the world theatrical repertoire, most of them have been screened many times. According to the Guinness Book of Records, Shakespeare remains the world's best-selling playwright, and his plays and poems have sold more than 4 billion copies in the nearly 400 years since his death.
Marianne "Manni" Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, real name Maria Anna Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, née Mayr-Melnhof, is a dowager princess and Austrian photographer.
On her mother's side, Maria is a direct descendant of Empress Maria Theresa, which has opened all doors of aristocracy, business, politics and art to her. She was encouraged to take up photography by Lilly Palmer and Karl Lagerfeld after her husband died in 1962. Soon she was working with Frau im Spiegel magazine, then Bunte and Vogue.
Wherever she was - skiing in St. Moritz, on a yacht, at parties and weddings, in Europe and in America, Maria photographed everyone around her: Onassis and Maria Callas, Prince Charles, Gianni Agnelli, Romy Schneider, Luciano Pavarotti, the Queen Mother or King Juan Carlos. During her lifetime she photographed many world celebrities. By her centenary, Maria had more than 300,000 of her photographs in her archive.
Maria never took immodest or offensive photos of her friends. Princess Caroline of Monaco once joked, "You're not a paparazzi, you're a mamarazza," thus the nickname Marianne Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn was born.
Henri Joseph Harpignies was a French landscape painter of the Barbizon school.
