So I brought up in class yesterday a little about Johann Sebastian Bach's second wife, Anna Magdalena. I thought I'd elaborate on her a bit.
Anna Magdalena's family was one of musicians; her father was a trumpeter at the court of Weissenfels, a town not too far from Köthen, where Bach was living when his first wife (Maria Barbara, who was a removed cousin of his) died. Her maternal grandfather was an organist in another relatively nearby German town (the name of which escapes me at the moment). Magdalena and her older sisters were all trained as singers; she and the second eldest sister were trained (perhaps by a woman by the name of Pauline Kellner - a WOMAN?! WOW) as singers. Magdalena was known to have been employed in this capacity at Zerbst, a neighboring court ot Weissenfels. By the time she was hired by Bach at Köthen in 1721 (not quite a year after Maria Barbara had died) Magdalena was the only unwed sister left in her family - and when she did marry Bach at the end of 1721, she was the only one not married to a trumpeter.
The prince Bach worked for was a particularly rich one; Prince Leopold was the ruler over a small but very wealthy area, and a generous one at that: while Leopold was a Calvinist, he allowed his employees to worship however they liked (allowing Bach to continue in his Lutheran tradition). Magdalena too was a Lutheran, making their marriage fairly simple; she presumably would have had to convert had she not been - but maybe not. At any rate, when hired, she was in a pay grade higher than both her elder brother (yet another trumpeter) and father (though they both worked for dukes rather than princes). After they married, Magdalena continued singing in her position professionally (rather than retiring to domestic life). She did so until their move to Leipzig in 1723.
It is also worth mentioning that Bach employed a few other female singers while in Köthen, though if I remember correctly they were...well, only singers. All the other instrumentalists were men. But hey, it's a start, right?
On THAT token, I also wanted to mention that Bach was friends with Johann Adolfe Hasse and his wife Faustina, that opera singer in chapter 5 of the Pendle book. Bach would make fairly frequent trips to Dresden while he lived in Leipzig for various reasons; there are accounts of him giving organ recitals there, but it would appear that he would go to see opera. It is likely, therefore, that he saw Faustina perform (and as a small side note, since Staatskapelle Dresden has definitely played for the big opera company there for like 500 years, he heard them as well - what fun, since we just performed with them a few months ago!).
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