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The career of violinist Esther Abrami contains elements of classical music-making, Internet influence, and high fashion. In 2019, she became the first classical musician nominated in the Social Media Superstar category at the Global Awards.

Abrami was born in France in 1996 and grew up in Aix-en-Provence. She attended a small school in the country. At three, she was given a child-size violin by a grandmother who had hoped to pursue a musical career but gave up the violin upon her marriage. It took until she was ten for Abrami to return to the violin, but when she did, she knew within half an hour that she wanted to make the violin her life. She attended the Aix-en-Provence Conservatoire, graduating at 14. She then moved to England for studies at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where her teacher was Jan Repko. In 2017, she was accepted at the Royal College of Music in London, studying with Leonid Kerbel. It was around this time that Abrami began to cultivate her online presence, posting videos of herself practicing and explaining such issues as the difference between a Stradivarius violin and an ordinary instrument. One appearance was with a kitten in a waist pouch; that video garnered more than ten million views. Later, she represented the Royal College of Music as a student at the Manhattan Institute of Music in New York. Abrami took master classes from various teachers, including Shmuel Ashkenasi, Alexander Markov, and jazz violinist Regina Carter. She was accepted for master's degree studies at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire with Wen Zhou Li, receiving a full scholarship.

Abrami has appeared as a soloist at such venues as Carnegie Hall in New York, and the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican Centre, and the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. She has also performed at the studios of the Classic FM radio network in Britain. Various companies have attempted to leverage Abrami's music and considerable Internet presence; these include, in the words of Abrami's own website (accessed April 16, 2022), "leading brands across a variety of industry sectors. From luxury fashion to music streaming, luxury perfumes and cosmetics to technology start-ups." Signed to the Sony Classical label, Abrami released her eponymously titled debut album in 2022; it contained a composition of Abrami's own, Sainte Victoire en Sol mineur, for violin, orchestra, and programming. ~ James Manheim

Léo Delibes was a notable composer of ballet, who, even more so than his teacher Adolphe Adam, rescued the art of ballet from a period of neglect after the death of Rameau. Delibes was the first to craft a full-length ballet score with the care and distinction already common among the best opera composers; not only could he produce buoyant, memorable tunes, but he delivered them in sparkling orchestrations. He also wrote several operas, of which Lakmé -- which generated the popular "Bell Song" aria and the now-ubiquitous "Flower Duet" -- is the best known.

Delibes learned the rudiments of music from his mother, the daughter of an opera singer, and her uncle, the organist Edouard Batiste. His father died in 1847, and the family relocated to Paris, where he studied at the Paris Conservatory under Adam. He also sang in the choir of Ste. Marie-Madeleine as a teenager and became organist at St. Pierre-de-Chaillot in 1853, the same year he became accompanist and chorus master at the Théâtre-Lyrique. There he assisted in productions of operas by Gounod, Bizet, and Berlioz. Delibes moved to the same position at the prestigious Paris Opéra ten years later, although he remained a church organist until 1871.

The emerging composer concentrated on lighthearted operettas and farces in the manner of Offenbach, many of them for Offenbach's Bouffes-Parisiens theater. This first of these was Deux sous de charbon, produced in 1856. His first opportunity to work on a large ballet score came in 1866 at the Opéra, when he collaborated with Ludwig Minkus on La Source. The success of this ballet led eventually to commissions for the two works that would again raise ballet music to its highest level yet: Coppélia (1870), based on a story of E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Sylvia (1876), based on a mythological theme. The former is still produced regularly, and both light, graceful works generated concert suites that, although not as common in the concert hall as they once were, have been frequently recorded. The two ballets' significance, beyond their own merits, is the direct influence they had on Tchaikovsky, whose mastery of the symphonic ballet owes everything to Coppélia and Sylvia.

Meanwhile, Delibes also honed his skill as an opera composer once his last operetta, L’écossais de Chatou, appeared in 1869. Most notable are his opéra comique Le Roi l'a dit (1873) and his more serious, exotic Lakmé (1883). The lasting appeal of Lakmé comes from its melodic charm and the colorful orchestration that enhances the story's Asian setting. Delibes' church music has fallen by the wayside, as have most of his colorful songs, apart from Les Filles de Cadiz, which exudes the same Franco-Spanish air as Bizet's Carmen. Delibes' great success as a composer of music for the theater in the 1870s and early 1880s gained him a professorship in composition at the conservatory in 1881, and membership in the French Institute in 1884. When he died in 1891, Delibes left one final opera, Kassya, complete except for the orchestration; that was done by Massenet for its 1893 premiere. ~ James Reel & Patsy Morita