Merry Christmas!
1734 beginning of the premiere of Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio in Leipzig; the work is in six parts, each part being intended for performance on one of the major feast days of the Christmas period; it’s often presented as a whole or split into two equal parts; at the premiere it was performed one part per day on six days beginning Christmas Day 1734 and ending January 6, 1735.
1863 premiere of Camille Saint-Saëns's Christmas Oratorio in Paris.
1870 first performance of Richard Wagner's A Siegfried Idyll, a symphonic poem for chamber orchestra composed as a birthday present to his wife, Cosima, after the birth of their son Siegfried in 1869.
1923 Louis Lane – American conductor (d.2016); was apprentice conductor to George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra in 1947, became assistant conductor 1955-1960, associate conductor 1960-1970 and resident conductor 1970-1973; a comment made by George Szell to Lane in 1957 about the eccentric pianist Glenn Gould became quite famous: “That nut’s a genius”.
1964 Ian Bostridge – English tenor (59 years old); accomplished in art song as well as in opera.