Monaco

Monaco

Monaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a sovereign city state on the French Riviera. It is bordered on three sides by its neighbour, France, and its centre is about from Italy. Its area is with a population of 35,986 as of 2011 and is the most densely populated country in the...

 is a city and independent state located in the south of France, along the Mediterranean coast. The country has long been under the control of the Grimaldi family, who have encouraged musical development. Prince Rainier III

Rainier III, Prince of Monaco

Rainier III, Prince of Monaco , styled His Serene Highness The Sovereign Prince of Monaco, ruled the Principality of Monaco for almost 56 years, making him one of the longest ruling monarchs of the 20th century.Though he was best known outside of Europe for having married American...

 introduced the Prince Rainier III Prize for Musical Composition to reward Monegasque musicians.

The Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1863 and gained a permanent home at Garnier Palace in 1879. The Orchestra is quite prominent in the classical world, and has been conducted by Igor Markevitch

Igor Markevitch

Igor Markevitch was a Ukrainian, Italian, and French composer and conductor.- Origin :Igor Markevich was born in Kiev, to an old family of Ukrainian Cossack starshyna ennobled in the 18th century...

, Lovro von Matačić

Lovro von Matacic

Lovro von Matačić was a Croatian conductor and composer.-Biography:Lovro von Matačić was born in Sušak to a family that was granted a noble title in the early 17th century. Growing up, he was always surrounded by music and art: his father had a career as an opera singer, and his mother as an actress...

, Paul Paray

Paul Paray

Paul Paray was a French conductor, organist and composer. He is best remembered in the United States for being the resident conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for more than a decade. He married Yolande Falck on 25 August 1944.-Biography:Paray's father, Auguste, was a sculptor and organist...

, Lawrence Foster

Lawrence Foster

Lawrence Foster is an American conductor.He became the conductor of the San Francisco Ballet at the age of 18, and served as Assistant Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta...

, Gianluigi Gelmetti

Gianluigi Gelmetti

Gianluigi Gelmetti is an Italian conductor and composer.He studied conducting with Franco Ferrara, Sergiu Celibidache and Hans Swarowsky. He first conducted an orchestra in Siena at age 16....

 and Louis Frémaux

Louis Frémaux

Louis Frémaux is a French conductor.-Life and career:Frémaux comes from an artistic background; his father was a painter, and his wife was a music teacher....

.

The Little Singers of Monaco are a children's choir founded in 1973, when the Palatine Chapel

Palatine Chapel

Palatine Chapel may refer to:*Palatine Chapel in Aachen of the Aachen Cathedral - the central monument of Carolingian art*Cappella Palatina of the Palazzo dei Normanni in Palermo - the central monument of Arab-Norman-Byzantine art...

's Chapel Master, Philippe Debat, was ordered by the government to send a choir of only children around the world. This practice carries on a tradition from the reign of Prince Antoine I, during whose rule a choir of children sang the liturgies

Liturgy

Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...

 in the Palatine Chapel.

The famous Franco-Monegasque singer Léo Ferré

Léo Ferré

Léo Ferré was a Franco-Monegasque poet, composer, singer and musician.Born in Monaco, Ferré mixed love and melancholy with moral anarchy, lyricism with slang, rhyming verse with prose monologues...

was born in Monaco.