Britney Jean Spears is an American recording artist and entertainer. Born in McComb, Mississippi and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears began performing as a child, landing acting roles in stage productions and television shows. She signed with Jive Records in 1997 and released her debut album in 1999. During her first decade within the music industry, she became a prominent figure in mainstream popular music and popular culture, followed by a much-publicized personal life. Her first two albums established her as a pop icon and broke sales records, while title tracks ".Baby One More Time" and "Oops!. I Did It Again" became international number-one hits. Spears was credited with influencing the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s.

In 2001, she released her third studio album Britney and expanded her brand, playing the starring role in the film Crossroads. She assumed creative control of her fourth studio album, In the Zone released in 2003, which yielded chart-topping singles "Me Against the Music", "Toxic" and "Everytime". After the release of two compilation albums, Spears experienced personal struggles and career went under hiatus. Her fifth studio album, Blackout, was released in 2007 and despite receiving little promotion, it spawned hits "Gimme More" and "Piece of Me". In 2008, her erratic behaviour and hospitalizations caused her to be placed in a conservatorship. The same year, her sixth studio album Circus was released, with the global chart-topping lead single "Womanizer". After embarking on The Circus Starring Britney Spears, she released greatest hits The Singles Collection, which featured U.S. and Canadian number-one single "3".

Spears has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling music artists. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, she is the eighth top-selling female artist in the United States, with 32

Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor. One of the most famous conductors of the 20th century, he was born in Berlin, but moved to several countries between 1933 and 1939, finally settling in the United States in 1939. He was born Bruno Schlesinger, but began using Walter as his surname in 1896, and officially changed his surname to Walter upon becoming naturalised in Austria in 1911. Bruno Walter was for many years active as a composer, but his works have not entered the repertoire.

Born near Alexanderplatz in Berlin to a middle-class Jewish family as Bruno Schlesinger, he began his musical education at the Stern Conservatory at the age of eight, making his first public appearance as a pianist when he was nine. However, following visits to one of Hans von Bülow’s concerts in 1889 and to Bayreuth in 1891, he changed his mind and decided upon a conducting career. He made his conducting début at the Cologne Opera with Albert Lortzing’s Der Waffenschmied in 1894. Later that year he left for the Hamburg Opera to work as a chorus director. There he first met and worked with Gustav Mahler, whom he idolized and with whose music he later became strongly identified.

In 1896 Schlesinger took a conducting position at the opera house in Breslau ? a job found for him by Mahler. The conductor recorded that the director of this theater, Theodor Löwe, required that before taking up this position he change his name of Schlesinger, which literally means Silesian, “because of its frequent occurrence in the capital of Silesia”, although other sources attribute the change to a desire to make his name sound less Jewish. In 1897, he took an opera-conducting position at Pressburg, and in 1898 he took one in Riga, Latvia. Then Walter returned in 1900 to Berlin, where he assumed the post of Royal Prussian Conductor at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, succeeding Franz Schalk; his colleagues there included Richard Strauss and Karl Muck. While in Berlin he also conducted the premiere of Der arme Heinrich by Hans Pfitzner, who became a lifelong friend.

In 1901 Walter accepted Mahler’s invitation to be his assistant at the Court Opera in Vienna. Walter led Verdi’s Aida at his debut. In the following years Walter’s conducting reputation soared as he was invited to conduct across Europe ? in Prague, in London where in 1910 he conducted Tristan und Isolde and Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers at Covent Garden, and in Rome. A few months after Mahler’s death in 1911, Walter led the first performance of Das Lied von der Erde in Munich, as well as Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 in Vienna the next year.

Brian Aherne was a British actor of both stage and screen, who found success in Hollywood.

He was born William Brian de Lacy Aherne in King’s Norton, Worcestershire, the son of William de Lacy Aherne by his spouse Louise née Thomas. Educated at Edgbaston, Birmingham, he had also carried out some early stage training at Italia Conti Academy in London and had some child roles before completing his education at Malvern College. He first appeared on the stage in Birmingham with the Pilgrim Players, on April 5, 1910, in Fifinella; and made his first appearance on the London stage at the Garrick Theatre, December 26, 1913, in Where the Rainbow Ends, a fairy play by Clifford Mills and John Ramsey, with music by Roger Quilter, which ran at various theatres for over 25 years.

He then studied with a view to becoming an architect, but, having had considerable amateur experience in Birmingham, and with the Liverpool Green Room Club, he obtained an engagement under Robert Courtneidge, and appeared at London’s Savoy Theatre, opening on December 26, 1923, as Jack O’Hara in a revival of Paddy the Next Best Thing, the play by W. Gayer-Mackay and Robert Ord. He then toured with Violet Vanbrugh as Hugo in The Flame, and appeared at the London Playhouse in May 1924 as Langford in Leon Gordon’s White Cargo, in which he played all through 1924-5. In 1926 he accompanied Dion Boucicault Jr. to Australia, where he appeared in several plays by J. M. Barrie: as Valentine Brown in the comedy Quality Street, John Shand in the comedy What Every Woman Knows, Crichton in The Admirable Crichton, Simon and Harry in Mary Rose; and Willocks in Aren’t We All? another comedy by Frederick Lonsdale.

Aherne reappeared in London at the Strand in March 1927 again as Langford in White Cargo and continued on the London stage in a succession of plays until late 1930 when he went to America, making his first appearance on the New York stage at the Empire Theatre in New York on February 9, 1931, playing Robert Browning in Rudolph Besier’s play The Barretts of Wimpole Street opposite Katharine Cornell. Cornell and Aherne remained lifelong friends and he played in many of her subsequent productions. He was back in London in 1934 but returned that year to New York, where he appeared in December at the Martin Beck Theatre as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, with Katharine Cornell. He continued his stage appearances during his film career, which he commenced in 1924 in silent film.