Italian composer Giacomo Puccini was born on December 22, 1858, into a musical dynasty in Tuscany. He started his career at age 14 as an organist at local churches until an 1876 performance of Verdi's "Aida" lured him into opera. The hallmark of his works is a rich, unrivalled fusion of erotic passion, sensuality, tenderness, pathos and despair. His first major opera, "Manon Lescaut" (1893), achieved great success, but "La bohème" (1896), with its mix of the lighthearted and sentimental in a conversational style, was not appreciated. "Tosca" (1900), his first "verismo" work (realistic depiction of life), was a huge hit, but "Madama Butterfly" (1904) was a failure he revised five times. Puccini’s final work, the fantastical “Turandot,” was unfinished at his death in 1924, but its tenor aria “Nessun dorma” is one of the most moving and beautiful pieces in all of opera.
On December 21, 1620, the first landing party of English religious separatists, later known as “Pilgrims,” arrived at the site of what would become the Plymouth settlement. Congregationalists from Nottinghamshire were the core group, led by William Bradford. They were not the first people in the area. Besides indigenous tribes, Europeans including
Englishman John Cabot had explored, fished and settled North America’s east coast for nearly a century. In 1605 Frenchman Samuel de Champlain had studied the Plymouth Harbor area, and his maps showed the native village of Patuxet (where Plymouth would be built) as a thriving settlement. But an epidemic in 1617–1619 wiped out 90% of Native Americans along the Massachusetts coast. Lack of serious native opposition to the Pilgrims was pivotal to their success and to English colonization.
Correction: John Cabot was an Italian explorer, sailing for Henry VII of England.
Prince George, Duke of Kent (George Edward Alexander Edmund) was born on December 20, 1902, at the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, England. He was the fourth son of King George V and Queen Mary, and younger brother of King Edward VIII (who abdicated the throne in 1936) and King George VI, father of Elizabeth II. Before and after his marriage to his third cousin, Prince George had a string of affairs with women and men, from socialites to Hollywood celebrities, including prolific author Barbara Cartland and (apparently) multi-talented playwright Noel Coward. He is said to have been addicted to drugs, particularly morphine and cocaine. One of his illegitimate children is believed to have been the first husband of Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. He died in the crash of a flying boat in Scotland, while serving in the Royal Air Force in 1942.
Industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick was born on December 19, 1849, in Pennsylvania. Vowing to be a millionaire by age 30, he began his rapacious career in the coal and coke industry, then became chairman of Carnegie Steel and a major player in the formation of U.S. Steel. He also financed the Pennsylvania and Reading Railroads. Frick was known as “the most hated man in America” and, to this day, he is vilified for his ruthlessness and lack of morality in business, notably his actions during the Homestead Steel labor strike (1892). In 1913-1914 he built an opulent mansion on New York’s Fifth Avenue (at 70th), with private gardens on the Avenue and in an interior courtyard. Now known as “The Frick,” it houses his collection of Old Masters and objets d'art. Pictured: central Living Hall of the Frick Collection, showing El Greco’s “Saint Jerome” (1590).
Swiss-born painter Paul Klee was born on December 18, 1879, near Bern. In much of his work, he aspired to achieve a naïve, untutored quality, but his art is also among the most cerebral of the 20th century. His intellectual curiosity shows in works informed by structures and themes drawn from music, nature and poetry. Titles play a major role – ironic, poetic, irreverent, deadpan, flippant – and set up the perspectives from which he wanted his works to be seen. He worked in many media, including oil paint, watercolor, ink, pastel, etching and others, often combining them in one work. In his own words, Klee said he liked to “take a line for a walk.” Pictured: “Senecio” (1922), portrait of an artist performer in harlequin. Color and geometry show the shifting relationship between art, illusion and the world of drama.
On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright took to the air in their Wright Flyer near the Kill Devil Hills south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They made two flights each in the first successful powered aircraft, from level ground into a freezing headwind gusting to 27 miles per hour. The first flight, by Orville, spanned 120 feet in 12 seconds, at a speed of only 6.8 miles per hour (pictured, in a famous photograph). The Wright brothers focused on developing reliable pilot control as the way to solve "the flying problem," not on a powerful engine. Their first U.S. patent did not claim invention of a flying machine, but a system of aerodynamic control that manipulated a flying machine's surfaces. A piece of fabric and wood from the Wright Flyer was taken to the Moon’s surface by Apollo 11, the first lunar landing mission, in July 1969.
December 16, 1770, is the accepted birthdate of German composer and pianist Ludwig van Beethoven. Born in Bonn, he moved to Vienna in 1792 to study with Joseph Haydn (the father of the symphony and string quartet), where he became known as a virtuoso pianist. His first public performance in 1795 was one of his first two piano concertos. The following year, at age 26, he began losing his hearing, suffering from severe tinnitus that made it hard for him to hear music; he also avoided conversation. The cause of his deafness has been variously attributed to typhus, auto-immune disorders and his habit of immersing his head in cold water to stay awake. When he died in 1827 an autopsy showed a "distended inner ear" that had suffered lesions over time. In his later years Beethoven and his friends communicated via 400 conversation books, more than half of which were later destroyed.
On December 15, 1944, Swing Era bandleader and trombonist Glenn Miller, a captain in the U.S. Army, boarded a single-engine aircraft near London bound for Paris to perform for American troops that had recently helped liberate the city. He was never seen again as the plane went missing over the English Channel. Miller’s big band, one of the best known of its time, featured trademark orchestration that put the high-pitched clarinet on the melody line, doubled by the saxophone section an octave below. His wildly popular recordings include "Moonlight Serenade" (1939), "Little Brown Jug" (1939), "In the Mood" (1940), "Pennsylvania 6-5000" (1940), "Tuxedo Junction" (1940), "Chattanooga Choo Choo" (1941), "At Last" (1941), and "(I've Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo" (1942). Miller is still Missing in Action. His death may have been the result of “friendly fire.”
Singer and actor Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915. He first became popular in the 1940s swing era, recording his first album in 1946. After winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “From Here to Eternity” (1953), he signed with Capitol Records and his career took off with a series of highly praised albums: In the Wee Small Hours (1955), Songs for Swingin' Lovers! (1956), Come Fly with Me (1958), Only the Lonely (1958) and Nice 'n' Easy (1960). He founded Reprise Records in 1961 and scored massive hits with his albums September of My Years (1965), Strangers in the Night (1966) and My Way (1969). He also starred in “On the Town” (1949), “Guys and Dolls” (1955), “High Society” (1956), “Pal Joey” (1957) and “The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Pictured: Sinatra intensely disliked this album cover, saying it looked like an ad for TWA.
French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz was born on December 11, 1803. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works, and he performed several concerts with more than 1,000 musicians. Between 1830 and 1840, he wrote many of his most popular works, including the Symphonie fantastique (1830), Harold en Italie (1834), the Grande messe des morts (Requiem) (1837) and Roméo et Juliette (1839). The Requiem calls for a vast orchestration of woodwind and brass instruments, including four antiphonal offstage brass ensembles placed at the corners of the concert stage. Berlioz composed the Symphonie fantastique (subtitled “An Episode in the Life of an Artist, in Five Parts”) for an Irish actress, Harriet Smithson, with whom he fell in love after seeing her as Ophelia in a performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet. They married in 1833 but separated in bitterness.
