BARBER, SAMUEL (1910-1981), U.S. Composer

Barber began composing when he was seven, tried writing his first opera when he was ten, and was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music at the age of thirteen. Throughout a career spanning more than fifty years, he created richly expressive, lyric music, including his Pulitzer Prize winning opera Vanessa and the enormously popular Adagio for Strings, written when Barber was twenty-six. He remains today one of the most often performed of American composers in the international symphonic repertoire. Barber's homosexuality was, throughout most of his adult life, an open secret in the music world. For many years he lived with and maintained a close personal and professional relationship with operatic composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who wrote the libretto for Vanessa and collaborated with Barber on a number of other works.