1870 first performance of the original version of Peter Tchaikovsky’s fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet in Moscow with Nicolas Rubinstein conducting; the subject was suggested to Tchaikovsky by Mily Balakirev, who also provided the composer with a detailed plot outline and the musical form, including keys; the work was revised twice, and it is the 1880 final version that is most often heard today.
1894 premiere of Jules Massenet's Thaïs in Paris; set in Egypt during Byzantine rule, where a Cenobite monk, Athanaël, attempts to convert Thaïs, an Alexandrian courtesan and devotee of Venus, to Christianity; the opera is often described as bearing a sort of ‘religious eroticism’.
1920 John Addison – English composer (d.1998); best known for film scores for A Bridge Too Far (1977), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) and Sleuth (1972) among many others.
1934 Sir Roger Norrington – English conductor (90 years old); founded the Schütz Choir in 1962 and the London Classical Players in 1978; retired in 2021 at 87.
1937 David Del Tredici – American composer (died November 18, 2023); had a decade-long obsession with the work of Lewis Carroll (e.g. An Alice Symphony, Vintage Alice, Adventures Underground, and Final Alice); awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for In Memory of a Summer Day, the first part of Child Alice.
1953 Claus Peter Flor – German conductor (71 years old); principal guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony from 1999 to 2008, and from 2008 to 2014, music director of the Malaysian Philharmonic.