Marcus Samuel Blitzstein was born in Philadelphia on March 2nd, 1905, the son of affluent parents. His musical gifts were apparent at an early age, and he had performed a Mozart Piano Concerto by the time he was seven.

He went on to study piano with Alexander Siloti, (a pupil of Liszt and Tchaikovsky), and made his professional concerto debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra

Despite his later political beliefs, he was, in the early years of his career, a self-proclaimed and unrepentant artistic snob who firmly believed that true art was only for the intellectual elite.

He was vociferous in denouncing composers - in particular Kurt Weill - whom he felt debased their standards to reach a wider public.

His works of this period, mostly pianistic vehicles such as the Piano Sonata (1927) and the Piano Concerto (1931) are typical of the Boulanger-influenced products of American modernism - strongly rhythmic (although in Blitzstein's case, not influenced by Jazz), and described by himself as "wild, dissonant, and percussive."

All of which was very far removed from the Schoenbergian line of compositional thought.

Yet, a new aesthetic was taking shape in the early thirties, one that sought to make art useful and communicative to all audiences, and not just the "anointed in Carnegie Hall".

Although he knew himself to be homosexual, he found in Eva Goldbeck a mind that would match his own, a foil and support for his ideals.

He also knew that it would do him no harm to shelter behind the respectability of married life.

Although Eva was under no illusions about her husband’s sexuality, theirs was a deep and intense relationship, and, although widely perceived by those who knew them as a "mariage de convenance", Eva's diaries indicate that it was a marriage in the fullest sense.

Struggling against breast cancer, and always frail, Eva died suddenly on May 26th, 1936, of an illness that we now know to be anorexia nervosa.

Blitzstein was shattered, and in order to escape his grief, he threw himself into his work, beginning composition of a political opera, suggested to him by Brecht some months earlier.

The political opera was The Cradle Will Rock, and the sensational premiere, under Orson Welles' direction, made Blitzstein a famous man.

Finding inspiration from his newly discovered political consciousness, The Cradle Will Rock was followed by further political works, most notably the radio play I’ve got the tune (1937), dedicated to Welles, and the musical play - opera No for an answer, first performed in 1941.

It was during this period that the endeavours of a brilliant young student came to his notice through a production at Harvard of The Cradle Will Rock.

In 1949 he returned to the stage with his most ambitious work, an operatic version of Lillian Hellman's play, The little foxes, entitled Regina.

Despite critical acclaim, its initial run on Broadway lasted barely six weeks.

Later revivals in 1953 and 1958 established Regina in its rightful place in the opera house.

It is still his most frequently performed composition, and, in its recently restored complete from, is arguably the great American opera.

Originally produced in 1952 at Brandeis, under Bernstein, it became one of Off-Broadway's longest running attractions.

It also gave Blitzstein his only pop hit, Bobby Darin's (amongst others) "Mack the knife".

But the remaining years of the 50s were less kind.

In 1958, Blitzstein received a subpoena to appear before the HUAC, the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Appearing first in a closed session, Blitzstein admitted his membership of the Communist Party (which had ceased in 1949), and, challenging the right of HUAC to question him at all, refused either to name names, or co-operate any further.

He was recalled for a further public session, but after a day anxiously sitting in a waiting-room, he was not called to testify.

By the late 50s, the McCarthy witch-hunts were running out of steam, and Blitzstein, being by that time neither the big name that McCarthy liked to humiliate, nor having any substantial income that a public investigation could jeopardise, was in less danger from the threat of the black-list.

Nevertheless, the strain that the experience caused was the last thing that he needed in those gloomy years at the end of the decade.

Blitzstein's last projects were two one act operas, Idiots First, and The Magic Barrel, both adaptations of short stories by Bernard Malamud, and Sacco and Vanzetti, a commission from the Metropolitan Opera, New York.

The trial and execution of the Italian immigrant anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartomoleo Vanzetti, in 1927, was an infamous left-wing cause célèbre.

It had formed the subject of his earlier choral opera The Condemned (1932), and continued to fascinate him; all were to be left incomplete.

In 1963, Blitzstein had decided to spend the winter in Martinique.

Late one January evening, during a session of heavy drinking, he had picked up three Portuguese sailors.

Exactly what happened next is unclear, but it seems that whilst travelling between bars, one slipped into a nearby alley with Blitzstein in response to his sexual advances.

The other two followed and all three robbed him, beat him up and stripped him of all his clothes except his shirt and socks.

The police found him moaning and crying in the middle of the night, and took him to a hospital.