For centuries, composers have found inspiration in love stories, love poems, and often their own love affairs. Clara and Robert Schumann wrote music for each other; Gustav Mahler wrote the Adagietto of his Fifth Symphony while madly in love with his new wife, Alma Schindler; and when Peter Lieberson read the love sonnets of Pablo Neruda, he knew right away that he would set them to music for his wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Berlioz, Prokofiev, Bellini, and Delius were some of the many composers who fell under the spell of the Romeo and Juliet story. We know that no week of love songs would be complete without hearing Pavarotti, Domingo, and Callas in arias from La Bohème, Carmen, and Tosca.
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