È La Solita Storia (It's The Same Old Story!) Quiz

Answer: both die of consumption

Pulmonary consumption, as tuberculosis was often called, was indeed widespread in nineteenth-century Europe, and tubercular heroines were something of a cliché in Romantic fiction. Verdi's Violetta and Puccini's Mimi are both separated from their lovers but are eventually reunited with them in deathbed scenes. Hackneyed as the plots are, the music of Verdi and Puccini makes it very hard to hold back the tears.

Answer: both are male characters played by women, who put on female dress during the opera

The "breeches part" (or Hosenrolle or travesti as it's often called in the polyglot world of opera), in which a woman plays a male character, goes back a very long way. In "The Marriage of Figaro" and "Der Rosenkavalier" the gender ambiguity is heightened by having the "male" character assume female dress to advance the comic plot.

Answer: they both kill their wives

Canio, the leading man in a troupe of travelling players, discovers that his wife is planning to elope with her lover, and kills her as the two of them act the parts of a husband and an unfaithful wife in their harlequinade. In Verdi's opera, as in Shakespeare's play, Otello kills his wife because he believes Iago's false accounts of her infidelity with Cassio.

Answer: they are beheaded

The plot of "Il Trovatore" is so complicated and so bizarre that it can't be summarized here. Essentially, Manrico (the "trovatore" or troubadour or minstrel of the title) is beheaded after failing in an attempt to rescue his gypsy mother (or reputed mother) from custody.

In Strauss's opera, as in Oscar Wilde's play and the gospels of Matthew and Mark, the Baptist is beheaded on Herod's orders at the instigation of Salome.

Answer: both are unmarried mothers

In "Faust" Marguerite is seduced by Faust and sentenced to death for killing her illegitimate child. However, though condemned by mankind, she is saved by God because of her repentance. In the final scene of "Cavalleria Rusticana" Santuzza hears of her lover's death in a duel and faints: her final fate is not known.

Answer: they disguise themselves as notaries to officiate at mock marriages

Don Pasquale,a bachelor, is determined to marry in order to disinherit his nephew. He is tricked into a mock marriage of which he soon repents, and finally gives his blessing to his nephew's own marriage. In the decidedly bitter-sweet "Così fan tutte" the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella have their fidelity tested and found wanting: towards the end their maid Despina, disguised as a notary, is about to marry each of them to the other's fiancé.

Answer: both are killed in duels over the honour of women

Valentin, the brother of the heroine Marguerite, learns of his sister's seduction by Faust, duels with Faust, but is inevitably killed since Faust is under the protection of Mephistopheles. In "Don Giovanni" the aged Commendatore is killed by Don Giovanni in a duel over the honour of the Commendatore's daughter Donna Anna.

Answer: both have their deaths foretold in fortune-telling scenes

Carmen, in a card-reading session with her gypsy friends, foresees her own death. In Verdi's "Masked Ball"the fortune-teller Mademoiselle Arvidson foretells the King's death, and the King is eventually killed at a ball by his secretary Count Anckarstroem, who believes the King to be his wife's lover.

Owing to nineteenth-century censorship, "Un Ballo in Maschera" exists in two versions: in one of them the scene is set not at the Swedish court but in Boston, Massachusetts in pre-Revolutionary times.

Answer: an employer changes clothes with his/her servant

In "Figaro" the philandering Count Almaviva is pursuing his wife's maid Susanna. The Countess persuades Susanna to make an assignation with the Count: they then change clothes and the Countess keeps the date in Susanna's place.

The change in "Don Giovanni" is one of the Don's cruel tricks. Leporello, the Don's servant, is made to dress in his master's clothes and pay court to Elvira, one of the Don's cast-off mistresses, while the Don himself serenades Elvira's maid.

Answer: soldiers

The soldiers' chorus in "Faust" is sung by troops returning from a victorious war: they include Valentin, who soon learns of his sister's seduction by Faust. In "Il Trovatore" the Count di Luna's soldiers are about to attack the castle in which Manrico is holed up with Leonora, the object of both men's affections.

The attack is successful, and Manrico is beheaded, only for the Count to learn that he has unwittingly executed his own brother.