A String of Pearls Trivia Quiz

Answer: Baroque

Characterized by plentiful, intricate ornamentation, movement, and grandeur, the Baroque style flourished in Europe in the early 17th century, dominating the arts until the mid-18th century. Though the origin of the name is still debated, it is very likely that the French word "baroque" came from the Portuguese "barroco" or Spanish "barrueco", denoting an irregularly-shaped pearl. The often fanciful shapes of these pearls - widely used in jewelry and decorative arts (as shown in the photo)- were reminiscent of the extravagant curving lines synonymous with the Baroque style. The ultimate origin of the Spanish and Portuguese words, however, is still uncertain: one of the derivations that have been suggested is from Latin "verruca" ("wart").

Many cultured pearls are baroque in shape, in particular the Tahitian pearls produced by Pinctada margaritifera, the black-lip pearl oyster.

The Rococo, or Late Baroque, style of the mid- and late 18th century takes its name from the French "rocaille". Dada (origin unclear, though probably a nonsensical word) and Fauvism (from the French "fauve", meaning "wild beast") are both early 20th-century movements.

Answer: Georges Bizet

Georges Bizet wrote "The Pearl Fishers" ("Les pêcheurs de perles") in 1863, at the age of 24, after receiving a commission from French impresario Léon Carvalho - which Bizet was given as a former winner of the prestigious scholarship known as Prix de Rome. Composed in a few months, the three-act opera was premiered on 30 September 1963 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris. Though widely panned by critics, the opera brought Bizet to the attention of both the public and his fellow composers.

"The Pearl Fishers" is set on the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in unspecified "ancient times". The libretto by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré tells the story of two pearl fishers, Nadir and Zurga, whose vow of eternal friendship is threatened by their love for the same woman, Leila, a virgin priestess of the Hindu god Brahma. The two men's fateful meeting with Leila and their bond of friendship are the subject of the opera's most famous aria, "Au fond du temple saint" ("At the back of the holy temple"), a duet sung by Nadir (tenor) and Zurga (baritone) in Act 1, and repeated at the end of the opera by Nadir and Leila (soprano). The photo shows an illustration for the final scene of Act 1
produced for the opera's premiere at Milan's La Scala (20 March 1886).

"Carmen", Bizet's best-known work, was premiered on 3 March 1875, three months before the composer's untimely death at the age of 36. Of the three French composers listed as wrong answers, Massenet was a contemporary of Bizet, while Ravel and Debussy were born a few decades later.

Answer: The Scarlet Letter

The offspring of the adulterous relationship between Hester Prynne, the novel's protagonist, and the pastor Arthur Dimmesdale, Pearl (so named because she is "her mother's only treasure") is often presented as the living embodiment of her mother's sin in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel "The Scarlet Letter", set in Puritan Massachusetts in the 17th century.

However, the child - whose sharp powers of perception set her in stark contrast with the hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness of Puritan Boston - proves to be a blessing rather than a curse. The ostracism to which she is subjected by the townspeople does not touch her, as she is a child of nature, a "noble savage" of sorts. Innocent but deeply intuitive in spite of her young age, Pearl asks pointed questions about the meaning of the scarlet letter her mother is forced to wear. Her inquisitiveness eventually leads to the tragic climax of the events - which takes place when Pearl is only seven years old. In the novel's final chapter, it is implied that she is happily married overseas, and regularly in touch with her mother.

Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans" (1826), set during the French and Indian War, and Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" (1936), set during the American Civil War, are also historical novels, while Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852) depicts events that unfold at the time the novel was written.

Answer: Shanghai

The Pearl River (Zhujiang) is one of China's longest river systems, with an overall length of 2,400 km (1,500 mi). It flows through southern China, emptying into the South China Sea, and forming a large, low-lying delta criss-crossed by a network of tributaries and distributaries. Officially known as the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, this region is widely considered a megalopolis, home to over 100 million people. Many of the cities located in the Pearl River Delta are part of the province of Guangdong - including its capital, Guangzhou (Canton), one of the world's largest ports, as well as the special economic zone of Shenzhen. The region also includes the two Special Administrative Regions of Macau and Hong Kong. With its thriving manufacturing and industrial activity, the Pearl River Delta is one of China's major economic engines, and has been nicknamed "the world's factory".

The Pearl River's name comes from the pearl-coloured shells that lie at the bottom of the river in Guangzhou, through which it flows before reaching the South China Sea. The photo shows Haizhu Bridge, the first bridge to be built across the Pearl River in 1929-1933.

Like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong, Shanghai is one of the world's busiest container ports. However, it lies on the Yangtze Estuary, about 1,212 km (753 mi) northeast of Guangzhou.

Answer: Asian and mixed-race children

Born in West Virginia, Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (1892-1973) was taken to China by her missionary parents at four months of age. There she formed a lifelong connection with the Chinese people that would later be reflected in her literary work. She returned to the US in 1911 to attend college, but went back to China in 1914 to see her parents (who had stayed there). In 1917 she married agricultural economist and missionary John Lossing Buck, with whom she lived in China until 1934. Buck's best-known novel, "The Good Earth", winner of the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, was written during the couple's stay in Nanjing. The marriage ended in divorce the following year, and Buck remarried on the same day the divorce became effective.

Sadly, Buck was unable to ever return to China, as all her attempts were rejected by the Communist Party that had seized power in 1949. However, she never forgot her adoptive country, and - besides her works of fiction set in China - she devoted a large part of her life to humanitarian efforts involving the plight of Asian war children, as well as issues such as racism and gender discrimination. In 1949, Buck - together with fellow author James A. Michener, lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, and his wife Dorothy - created the Welcome House Adoption Program, which focused on finding adoptive families for biracial children, at the time considered "unadoptable". Since its foundation, the agency has placed over 7,000 children. In 1960, she also opened the Opportunity House Orphanage in South Korea, and in 1964 established the Pearl S. Buck Foundation (now Pearl S. Buck International) to support Asian children not eligible for adoption through humanitarian aid and education.

Buck died in 1973, and is buried in Green Hills Farm (Dublin, Pennsylvania), where she spent the last 40 years of her life. The house is now a National Historic Landmark, and a museum open to the public. The photo shows a portrait of the author by American artist Samuel Johnson Woolf, which can be viewed in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

Answer: Janis Joplin

Recorded with the Full Tilt Boogie Band, a Canadian ensemble, "Pearl" was released in January 1971, three months after Janis Joplin's death by drug overdose (4 October 1970) at the age of 27. The album's title comes from the nickname she had adopted in the spring of 1970: Pearl was her stage persona, a tough, over-the-top character - as illustrated by her photo on the album cover, wearing flamboyant clothing and holding a drink in her hand - separate from the real Janis with all her insecurities.

"Pearl" includes some of Joplin's best-known songs, such as "Cry Baby", "Me and Bobby McGee" (written by Kris Kristofferson), and the humorous, a cappella piece "Mercedes Benz", written by Joplin with Bob Neuwirth and the poet Michael McClure. The latter song, recorded in one take on 1 October 1970, was the last thing Joplin ever recorded. The album has been reissued a number of times with the addition of various live tracks recorded in the summer of 1970. Shortly after its release, "Pearl" charted at No. 1 of the US Billboard 200.

The three rock musicians listed as wrong answers all died at the age of 27: however, Amy Winehouse was born 13 years after Janis Joplin's death. Rolling Stones founding member Brian Jones died in 1969, and Jim Morrison of The Doors in 1971. The photo shows a Mercedes-Benz 600, the inspiration for Joplin's last song.

Answer: J.R.R. Tolkien

Dating from the late 14th century, "Pearl" is one of the major surviving literary works in Middle English. Written by an unknown author, it consists of 101 stanzas of 12 lines each, featuring both rhyme and alliteration - as well as a complex system of stanza linking - for a total of 1,212 lines. The poem's only surviving copy is found in the Cotton Nero A.x. manuscript (now in the British Library), which also contains the religious poems "Patience" and "Cleanness", and the chivalric romance "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight".

"Pearl" is narrated by a bereaved father, mourning the loss of his "pearl" (his infant daughter), who falls asleep in a garden. There he dreams of being transported to another garden, on the shore of a river that is implied to separate Heaven from the world of the living. While looking for a way to cross the river, the narrator encounters a young maiden dressed in white, whom he believes to be the "pearl" he lost. The miniature in the photo - one of the four included in the original manuscript - depicts the meeting between the maiden and the narrator. The second (and longest) of the poem's three sections is dedicated to a theological debate between the two characters. In the epilogue the dreamer plunges into the river in a desperate attempt to reach the city of God across the water, and awakens in the garden where he had initially fallen asleep, resolving to accept the will of God.

J.R.R. Tolkien, who - besides authoring iconic books such as "The Hobbit" and "the Lord of the Rings" - was a professor of English philology, translated "Pearl" in modern English in the 1920s, together with "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and "Sir Orfeo", another chivalric romance. The translation of the three Middle English works, however, was only published in 1975, two years after Tolkien's death.

Answer: Mozambique

Eusébio da Silva Ferreira (1942-2014) was born in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), the capital of Mozambique, which at the time was still a Portuguese possession. His father, originally from Angola (also a former Portuguese colony), was white, while his mother was a a black Mozambican. He started his career in football in his hometown's team; then, at the end of 1960, at the age of 18, he moved to Lisbon to play in Benfica, Portugal's most renowned club. Eusébio played a striker, becoming known for his speed, technique, and his skill as a scorer with his right foot. Considered one of the greatest players of all time, Eusébio contributed to Portugal's third place in the 1966 FIFA World Cup, where he won the Golden Boot as the tournament's top goalscorer (9 goals). In his 15 seasons with Benfica (1960-1975), he won 11 Primeira Liga titles and one European Cup.

Eusébio ended his career playing for a number of North American teams, and retired in 1979. In 1992, a bronze statue of the footballer (shown in the photo) was erected outside the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon. When Eusébio died in 2014, the Portuguese government declared three days of national mourning; the following year, his remains were moved to Lisbon's National Pantheon, in which important Portuguese personalities are buried.

For his power and grace on the football field, Eusébio was nicknamed the "Black Pearl" or the "Black Panther". Other notable "Black Pearls" were legendary Brazilian footballer Pelé, American-born French entertainer Joséphine Baker, and American sprinter Wilma Rudolph.

Answer: Matthew

In a parable that appears in Matthew 13:45-46 - immediately following the similar Parable of the Hidden Treasure - Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a "pearl of great price", found by a merchant who sells everything he owns in order to buy it. The parable means that it is worth to leave everything behind in order to attain the Kingdom of Heaven. A version of this parable appears in the non-canonical (apocryphal) Gospel of Thomas (Saying 76). "The Pearl of Great Price" is also the title of one of the four canonical standard works of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, containing a selection of writings by Joseph Smith, the Church's founder.

The well-known phrase "pearls before swine" appears in Matthew 7:6, in which "holy things" are compared to pearls. In the most common interpretation of the verse, pigs and dogs (both regarded at the time as unclean animals) refer to people who cannot appreciate the value of such things.

Revelation 21:21 contains the famous reference to the "Pearly Gates" in its description of the twelve gates of the New Jerusalem, each of which is made of a single pearl. The two stained glass windows from Scots' Church (Melbourne, Australia) in the photo depict the Parables of the Pearl and of the Hidden Treasure.

Answer: barley

To became edible, barley must be processed in order to remove the fibrous hull that covers each grain. Dehulled barley, also known as "pot barley" or "scotch barley", is considered a whole grain because the bran and germ remain intact after the removal of the outer covering. On the other hand, pearl barley is also steam-processed to remove the bran, and then further polished ("pearled"). The resulting grain cooks much more quickly than pot barley, and is not as chewy, but is also lower in fiber - though other nutrients present in barley are not removed by the pearling process.

Pearl barley is widely available, and used in a variety of dishes from different world cuisines. Jewish "cholent", a popular Shabbat dish, is a thick stew of barley, meat, potatoes and other vegetables left to simmer on Friday night to be eaten on the following day. In Korea, barley is steamed and often mixed with rice to accompany soups and stews. Barley soups, often containing chicken or pork, are widespread in Central and Eastern Europe. A variant of the Italian dish risotto, called "orzotto", is also made with pearl barley.

As implied in the question, barley is also one of the main ingredients of beer - the world's oldest alcoholic drink - and whisky.