1670 premiere of Molière’s five-act comédie-ballet (a play intermingled with music, dance and singing) Le Bourgeois gentilhomme at the Château de Chambord with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully; the play satirizes attempts at social climbing and the bourgeois personality, poking fun both at the middle-class and aristocracy alike.
1843 first performance of Felix Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream in Potsdam; written to a commission from King Frederick William IV of Prussia for one of the king's favorite Shakespeare plays.
1871 Alexander Zemlinsky – Austrian composer (d.1942); Brahms and Mahler were among his early supporters and Arnold Schoenberg was his brother-in-law; best-known work is the Lyric Symphony (1923), a seven-movement piece for soprano, baritone and orchestra.
1883 first performance of Antonín Dvorák's Violin Concerto in Prague; written in 1879 and intended for the famous violinist Joseph Joachim, who never actually performed it.
1928 Gary Graffman – American pianist, teacher of piano and music administrator (95 years old); made a classic recording of Prokofiev's First and Third Piano Concertos with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra in 1966; featured in the soundtrack of the 1979 Woody Allen movie Manhattan in George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue, accompanied by the New York Philharmonic.
1935 La Monte Young – American avant-garde artist, composer and musician (88 years old); generally recognized as the first minimalist composer; compositions question the nature and definition of music and often stress elements of performance art.
1952 Kaija Saariaho – Finnish composer (died June 2, 2023); awarded the title Musician of the Year 2008 by Musical America for being "among the few contemporary composers to achieve public acclaim as well as universal critical respect."
1977 Freddy Kempf – English pianist (46 years old); his early adult career ironically benefited from his failure to win the 1998 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow: first prize went to Denis Matsuev, and Mr. Kempf's third-place finish provoked a barrage of indignant protests from the audience and even the Russian press.