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Best known to record collectors for her performances with the fledgling Glyndebourne Festival from 1934 to 1938, Luise Helletsgruber was a tall, slender lyric soprano whose principal activities otherwise centered about the Wiener Staatsoper. Her association with the latter institution concluded during WWII, but in her two decades of stage work, she achieved a reputation for reliable artistry, albeit a kind falling short of highest standards. After studies in her native city, Helletsgruber made her debut at the Staatsoper in 1922, singing the brief part of the shepherd in Tannhäuser. Her pleasing stage personality and attractive voice soon led her to such leading lyric roles as Eva, Cherubino, Dorabella, Micaëla, and Marguerite, with occasional ventures into slightly heavier roles such as Elsa in Lohengrin and Puccini's Liù. In 1934, she was engaged by John Christie for the first season of the Mozart festival conceived largely for an opportunity for Christie's wife, soprano Audrey Mildmay. Thus, the Austrian soprano joined international casts for performances of Così fan tutte (Dorabella) and Le nozze di Figaro (Cherubino) for the first season of what would become one of the world's most celebrated summer festivals. Under the conducting of Fritz Busch and the stage direction of Carl Ebert, Helletsgruber's instincts as a Mozartean were honed and she achieved a worthy reputation for her work in that repertory. For 1935, she repeated her Cherubino and Dorabella and added the First Lady in Die Zauberflöte. In 1936, Helletsgruber added Donna Elvira to her portrait gallery while repeating Dorabella and the First Lady. In her final year at Glyndebourne, Helletsgruber sang five more Dorabellas and shared Donna Elvira with another Viennese soprano, Hilde Konetzni. From 1928 to 1937, Helletsgruber also performed at Salzburg. Upon HMV's recording of Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, Helletsgruber's work became a part of an important segment of music history; these recordings have seldom been out of the catalog since their issuance in the 1930s. In addition to fleeting moments recorded live on-stage in Vienna and a few studio arias, Helletsgruber is remembered for her singing of the soprano part in the fabled Felix Weingartner recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, assembled from two separate series of sessions in 1935 and 1938.

Nash was one of the most elegant and yet emotionally direct lyric tenors of the first half of the twentieth century, with a sweet timbre and very fine technique. His voice was not a large one, but very well-produced and focused, though towards the end of his career, there was some occasional pinching in the uppermost register.

After serving in the army during World War I, Nash attended the Blackheath Conservatory, and later trained in Milan, Italy, under Giuseppe Borgatti. He had his operatic debut in 1924 as Count Almaviva in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, making his London debut the year after at the Old Vic as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's Rigoletto. His Covent Garden debut was in 1929 as Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni, and he was very favorably compared to John McCormack, the singer who had previously "defined" the role. He appeared in the first Glyndebourne season in 1934 as Ferrando in Mozart's Così fan tutte. Most of his career was in England, where he was as acclaimed for his English oratorio performances as for his Italian operatic ones. In 1934, he also sang the lead in Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius for the first time, at the Gloucester Festival, and for many, his interpretation of that role has never been surpassed for its insight or its lyrical beauty.

Although his handsome bass voice lacked the weight often expected in a low-ranged singer, Italo Tajo made a successful career based on his excellent grasp of style and character. Particularly adept in Mozart, Tajo performed a wide range of bass characters and showed an affinity for comic roles. Tajo eventually took up a position on the opera faculty at Cincinnati, but in his sixties he returned to the Chicago and Metropolitan Opera stages to perform such roles as Alcindoro/Benoit (La Bohème), Don Pasquale, and the Sacristan (Tosca).

Tajo's first name derived from the fact that, of five children, he was the only one to have been born in his native Italy. He sang in a church choir in Pinerolo when a mere boy; the director's suggestion that Tajo study seriously was met with opposition from his father, who envisioned for him a career as a doctor. When Tajo's enthusiasm for music persisted, his father surrendered and gave his approval, clearing the way for Italo to study with Nilde Stinche-Bertozzi in nearby Turin. When he was 20, Tajo made his debut at the Teatro Regio in Turin singing Fafner (Das Rheingold) under the direction of Fritz Busch. Busch was sufficiently impressed to invite Tajo to the Glyndebourne Festival that same year to serve as an understudy and chorus member. When English bass Norman Allin was unavailable for the first-ever recording of Le nozze di Figaro, Tajo was called upon to sing Don Bartolo's La vendetta, an astonishing responsibility for so youthful a singer. His success led to his being engaged for the 1936 Edinburgh Festival.

During WWII, Tajo discharged his military duty as a grenadier guard in Rome, an assignment that afforded him time for the study of new roles and for performances at the Rome Opera. Among several important roles undertaken during that time was the Doctor in the first Italian performance of Wozzeck. Following the war's end, he sang at La Scala in L'amore dei Tre Re, Boris Godunov, Boito's Mefistofele, Gounod's Faust, Don Pasquale, L'Elisir d'amore, and Der Rosenkavalier. In Italy, he also appeared in several rarely performed works by Giordano, Wolf-Ferrari, and Pizzetti, as well as premiering works by Nono, Berio, and Malipiero.

Meanwhile, his American debut had taken place with the Chicago Opera when he sang Ramfis in a 1946 performance of Aida (he had also recorded the King with Serafin that same year in Rome). His Chicago Ramfis was described by the Tribune as "a high priest head and shoulders higher than his minions, with a voice rich in quality and full of operatic promise." Tajo's San Francisco debut came in 1948 when his Basilio and Leporello faced recollections of Baccaloni and still triumphed. Later that season, on December 28, Tajo made his Metropolitan Opera debut, winning strong approval for his Basilio and, a few days later, for his portrayal of Mozart's Figaro. As time passed, however, critics viewed with diminishing favor his overactive stage persona and a tendency to growl the music "from the side of his mouth" rather than focusing the voice in a conventional manner. Tajo's late performances in character roles were nonetheless ripely amusing and unfailingly memorable.

Fritz Busch was one the greatest German conductors of the first half of the twentieth century, noted for his illuminating performances and his ethical principles. His father was a former itinerant musician who became an instrument maker, and his brothers were violinist Adolf Busch and cellist Hermann Busch. Fritz Busch went to Cologne Conservatory in 1909, studying conducting with Steinbach.

The city of Aachen hired him as music director in 1912. He served there until the war began, enlisted, and returned at war's end to conducted the Municipal Opera. Six weeks later, he was appointed music director of the Stuttgart Opera. He quickly became famous for his performances and for the reforms he instituted to enlarge the repertory and discover new composers. He premiered two one-act operas of the young Paul Hindemith, operas by Pfitzner, and shook up the Wagnerian tradition by using Appia's modern approach to staging and sets for the Ring operas. Busch accepted a position with the Dresden State Opera, becoming music director in 1922. Among his premieres in the 11 years he remained there were Strauss' Intermezzo (1924) and Die Ägyptische Helena (1928), Hindemith's Cardillac (1926), Busoni's Doktor Faust (1925), and Weill's Der Protagonist (1926). He was credited with keeping Dresden at the highest level of German opera production with stagings that were often provocative, with some of the finest of modern artists designing sets and costumes. One of the most important was a production of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, designed by Carl Ebert and including a meticulously chosen cast, at the 1932 Salzburg Festival.

Busch was openly contemptuous of the new Nazi government that was appointed to power in Germany in 1933 and was fired from his Dresden post. At the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, he conducted the first complete performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion ever given in the Americas. He returned to Europe, appearing with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Stockholm Philharmonic, beginning a long-standing relationship with them. Then John Christie asked Busch to become music director of a summer opera festival at Glyndebourne, England. Busch accepted, bringing Ebert as artistic director. Glyndebourne was soon among the most prestigious of summer festivals, famous for meticulous musical preparation and use of the best and most appropriate voices. Mozart has always been a mainstay of Glyndebourne, but under Busch it also staged larger-scale works, including Donizetti's Don Pasquale and Verdi's Macbetto.

With the outbreak of the war (which closed Glyndebourne for the duration and made travel to Scandinavia impossible), he withdrew mainly to South America, although he made appearances at the New York Philharmonic. His Metropolitan Opera debut was on November 26, 1945, in Wagner's Lohengrin. He remained on the Met's conducting roster until 1949, but asked to be allowed to concentrate on conducting the company's annual national tours. He frequently conducted the Chicago Symphony from 1948 to 1950, and resumed his association with the Scandinavian orchestras in 1949 and at Glyndebourne in 1950. He returned to lead a few concerts in Austria (Vienna Staatsoper, 1950) and in Germany (Cologne and Hamburg, 1951).

He died in London, leaving several important recordings. The Busch Brothers Society private label has released several of them as part of a program to document the legacy of Busch, his two brothers, and the piano trio they often formed.