Pierre-Auguste Renoir (the acclaimed French impressionist painter) sang in a Catholic church choir when he was young. The choir was led by Charles Gounod, who had already made a name for himself as a composer of religious music. Gounod was very impressed with Renoir's voice, and felt that the boy had a promising future as a singer. Gounod offered Renoir free vocal lessons. Charles Gounod was in the process of shifting his compositional interests to opera, and in fact he later became famous as the the composer of the opera Faust. Gounod put the young Renoir in the chorus of the new opera he was directing. (Source: Lawrence Hanson, Renoir: The Man, The Painter, and His World, Dodd, Mead & Company: New York (1968), pages 7-8.)