Zimbalist, Rieba Fiersohn Glick (1882-1938) (“Alma Gluck”). Romanian-American soprano. Reba Fiersohn’s poor but music-loving family emigrated from Romania to New York City when she was a young child. She married insurance man Bernard Glick in 1902 and had a daughter who would become the novelist Marcia Davenport. An opera-lover who heard Reba sing arranged for her to have lessons in 1906; in 1909 she signed a contract with the Metropolitan Opera as Alma Gluck. In 1911 she began making a tremendously successful series of recordings of operatic and popular songs. She left the operatic stage in 1912 to study with Jean de Reszke and Marcella Sembrich, and then to devote herself to concert singing. She married violinist Efrem Zimbalist in 1914, by whom she had a son, actor Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., and they performed together. By the early 1920s, however, her voice was giving out and she performed rarely.

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756-1791). Austrian composer and musician. Born in Salzburg, Austria, son of Anna and Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang Mozart showed his musical genius early, as a keyboard performer from age four and a composer from age five. He toured Europe performing for more than ten years before becoming a court musician in Salzburg in 1773, composing prolifically in many forms. In 1781 he settled in Vienna and married Constanze Weber in 1782. After great success as a performer and composer of everything from operas to church music, he fell on hard times in the late 1780s and died in poverty while trying to finish his Requiem Mass in D minor.