Opera Trivia

1. Which composer wrote the opera 'William Tell'?

From Quiz The Wonderful World of Opera

Answer: Gioachino Rossini

This opera takes place in Austrian-occupied Switzerland, the protagonist being a leading member of the resistance movement. Tell is arrested along with his son and is famously obliged to shoot an apple from his son's head. The story ends with the celebration of the country's independence. The opera's overture is well known for being the theme music for the TV series 'The Lone Ranger'.

From Quiz Pushkin-Based Operas

Answer: In the book

The opera doesn't elaborate on Olga's fate after Lensky's death in the duel. In the novel, she mourns Lensky for a while and then eventually gets happily married to an uhlan (a member of a light cavalry unit).

From Quiz It Ain't Over Until The Fat Lady Sings

Answer: Nessun Dorma

"Nessun Dorma" ("Let No One Sleep") is one of the best-loved tenor arias in opera, from the unfinished opera "Turandot" by Puccini. The last words translate as "I will win" - and, very appropriately, Pavarotti's 1972 recording of the aria was used as the theme music by the BBC for their 1990 World Cup coverage.

From Quiz Extra Opera Summaries in Four Words

Answer: Capriccio

The main theme the characters discuss is whether music or poetry is the superior art form while attempting to stage an opera (which of course contains both). This isn't the only self-reflection in the piece: in one scene, servants discuss whether or not servants would make good protagonists for opera. The composer, Richard Strauss, contributed to the libretto. He also wrote the libretto for his "Intermezzo", which essentially consists of sung dialogue.

From Quiz Greatest Hits by Maria Callas

Answer: Casta Diva

All these arias stem from the opera "Norma" by Vincenzo Bellini. Norma is the protagonist: a high priestess of the druids of a Celtic tribe. She secretly fell in love with the Roman general Pollione and had two children with him. But now Pollione has broken with her and is enamoured by the young priestess Adalgisa. War between the Celtic tribe and the Romans is about to start, and the druids demand a ritual sacrifice to implore the gods' aid in battle. The crowd has apprehended Pollione and intends to sacrifice him, but Norma (who has to fulfill the deed) can't stab him. In the end, Norma confesses her infidelity and takes on the role of the sacrifice, and as she leaps into a pyre Pollione joins her. Callas made her debut at Covent Garden in London in 1952, at the Opera of Chicago in 1954, and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1956, all with the role of Norma. "Casta Diva" ("Chaste Goddess") is the aria in which Norma prays to the moon goddess for help in the war. "Meco all'Altar di Venere" ("With Me at Venus' Altar") is sung by Pollione, describing how he dreamt to meet Adalgisa in Rome at Venus' altar. "Deh! Proteggimi o Dio" ("Oh, Protect Me, O God") is an aria by Adalgisa, who prays to her gods to end her doomed love with Pollione. "In mia man alfin tu sei" ("In My Arms at Last You Are") is the duet between Norma and Pollione, sung just after she refused to sacrifice Pollione.

From Quiz Travesti Is No Travesty!

Answer: Disguised

In some times and places, such as many European countries into the 17th century and beyond, women were not allowed on stage at all, so the female roles in theater were played by men or boys "disguised" as women. En travesti roles are not limited to opera or theater: you can also find them in ballet. Widow Simone in "La Fille mal Gardee", the witch in "La Sylphide", and the evil fairy Carabosse in "The Sleeping Beauty" are female characters traditionally played by men, although Carabosse is more often played by a woman these days. Franz, the male lead in "Coppelia", was first played by a woman.

From Quiz Additional Opera Summaries in Four Words

Answer: Norma

Norma is a high priestess among the druids. She has broken her chastity vows by having an affair with a Roman and bearing two sons. She soon discovers that he's left her for another girl, who's also made vows. Norma doesn't blame Adalgisa or become angry at her, but she does want vengeance on the man. The title role of Bellini's work is considered one of the most difficult and taxing roles in opera.

From Quiz Further Opera Summaries in Four Words

Answer: La Fanciulla del West

Yes, there's an opera about the American Old West. Minnie is a well-liked barmaid who's in love with Dick Johnson, a thief in hiding. When he's discovered at her place, sheriff Jack Rance (these names do have a good Western ring to them) agrees to play a poker match against Minnie. If she wins, he won't arrest Johnson. If Rance wins, she will submit to him. The poker game ends Act II--there's still more conflict to resolve! This is, overall, a more upbeat opera than most Puccini ones. Despite taking place in the Old West, the libretto is in Italian. The English title is "The Girl of the Golden West".

From Quiz Yet More Opera Summaries in Four Words

Answer: Elektra

Strauss's opera, based on Greek myth and the plays of the "Oresteia", focuses on the title character, who seeks revenge on her mother for conspiring to kill her husband, Elektra's father. Elektra has gone insane from her father's murder: even her brother doesn't recognize her when he returns. The orchestra calls for 110 musicians and the use of the tambourine, the glockenspiel, and castanets.

From Quiz Operas That Offend

Answer: Cultural Appropriation

'If you want to know who we are, We are gentlemen of Japan: On many a vase and jar - On many a screen and fan, We figure in lively paint: Our attitude's queer and quaint - You're wrong if you think it ain't Ooh!' It is fairly certain that the opening chorus of 'The Mikado' sums up pretty much everything W. S. Gilbert actually knew about Japan. It quickly became one of the most popular comic operas ever. It has also became one of the most controversial. In the 1990s, amateur and professional productions of 'The Mikado' started to close due to protests. Accused of cultural appropriation, racism and caricaturing Asians, theatre directors decided to do something about it. Unlike other operas based in Asia, like 'Turandot', 'Madama Butterfly' or 'Lakme', 'The Mikado' is satiric. Although proponents argue that it has a lot more to do with society and politics in England than Japan, it also gives license for white singers with taped up eyes and long robes to ham it up all over the stage. In order to get away from this, some productions are now set in England. A successful English National Opera 'Mikado' of 2015 is set in a hotel at a seaside resort and nobody is Japanese. Other companies have mounted productions with all-Asian casts. Nevertheless, the protests continue. As Desdemona Chang argues in 'Why The Mikado is Still Problematic: Cultural Appropriation 101', 'The Mikado is not OK, but Hamilton is. Doing The Mikado will do a lot of hurt to the perception of an entire culture of people because in real life, they've been historically denied social agency. Alexander Hamilton, on the other hand, will probably be on the US ten-dollar bill for a long, long time.'

From Quiz Ten Nights at the Opera

Answer: Mozart

This opera, that premiered in 1791 (three months before Mozart's death) is more properly a "Singspiel", including sung parts and spoken parts. The music is fantastic, featuring the super-famous aria of The Queen of the Night, pièce de résistance for sopranos. The plot of the Emanuel Schikaneder libretto is very hard to follow, full as it is of allusions to Freemasonry and other esoteric themes, probably more clear for XVII century audiences than for me.

From Quiz The Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts

Answer: Hansel und Gretel (Humperdinck)

"Hansel and Gretel" was paired with "I pagliacci" that Christmas afternoon, but "I pagliacci" was not broadcast. In the cast of "Hansel und Gretel" were Editha Fleischer as Hansel, Queena Mario as Gretel, Henriette Wakefield as Gertrud, Gustav Schutzendorf as Peter, Dorothee Manski as the Witch, Dorothea Flexer as the Sandman, and Pearl Besuner as the Dew Fairy. Karl Riedel conducted. (Composer Deems Taylor served as narrator for this broadcast performance, providing commentary from a specially-constructed glass booth in one of the Grand Tier boxes. Problem was, his narration continued throughout the opera, while the singers were singing and the orchestra was playing. NBC received a good many telegraphed complaints about Taylor's commentary during the music, so Taylor scaled back his comments for the rest of the broadcasts that season - and the "narration" during the music was done away with entirely the following season.)

From Quiz One of These Opera Characters Doesn't Belong

Answer: Tatyana

Nemorino loves Adina, who is enamored with Belcore. A traveling fraud offers Nemorino a love elixir that will make women fall in love with him. Too bad it's only wine. Tatyana loves the title character in Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin".

From Quiz Still More Opera Summaries in Four Words

Answer: The Ghosts of Versailles

This opera by John Corigliano premiered in 1991 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Marie Antoinette has just been beheaded and is in an afterlife with other dead French courtiers, who wear decayed, ripped costumes. Playwright Beaumarchais decides to stage a sequel to "The Marriage of Figaro" to entertain the courtiers (to which Louis XVI replies that he never understood what happened in Act III of that opera). The story goes back and forth between the opera-within-an-opera and the drama of Marie Antoinette's grief at how her life turned out and her love for Beaumarchais. It contains many parodies of operatic conventions, including a cameo by Brunnhilde, who declares, "This is not opera! Wagner is opera!"

From Quiz Accessible Opera

Answer: Madame Butterfly

Lieutenant Pinkerton buys the right to marry a young ex geisha called Cio-Cio-San also known as Madam Butterfly. The Japanese marriage contract dissolves after one month if the husband wishes it, and Pinkerton thinks of it as a bit of fun, but Cio-Cio-San is really in love with him and sees it as a marriage for life. When he leaves her she is desperate and poverty stricken and cannot believe that he will not return.

From Quiz Even More Opera Summaries in Four Words

Answer: The Marriage of Figaro

"The Marriage of Figaro" is Mozart's sequel to Beaumarchais's play "The Barber of Seville" (which wasn't made into an opera by Rossini until after Mozart's opera). Figaro, the title character in "Barber", is getting married this time, after accidentally getting engaged to his mother. Meanwhile, his wife Susanna and her mistress Countess Almaviva conspire to teach the Count about fidelity, and not suspecting his wife of infidelity, by dressing Cherubino (a man who's played by a woman) as a woman and arranging a tryst (confusing, isn't it?).

From Quiz More Opera Summaries in Four Words

Answer: Das Rheingold

"Das Rheingold" starts Wagner's four-opera cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen". The three Rhinemaidens are tasked with protecting the Rhinegold, which can be forged into a ring of great power if one renounces love. After being scorned by them, Alberich the Nibelung steals the gold and forges the ring. When it's stolen, Alberich curses it: everyone will long for it, but only misfortune and death will come to those who possess it. Alberich's theft sparks a chain of events that will eventually destroy the world.

From Quiz Opera Summaries in Four Words

Answer: La Traviata

The title of Verdi's opera means "The Fallen Woman" and is based on the Alexandre Dumas book "La Dame aux Camélias". Violetta is a courtesan dying of consumption. She decides to pursue a romantic relationship with Alfredo, but being in a tragic opera, of course she can't have a happy ending. Alfredo's father begs her to stop seeing his son, leading to resentment and unhappiness. A ballet based on the same book, "Lady of the Camellias", has the same story and is set to Chopin music.

From Quiz Early Opera

Answer: Tommaso Albinoni

Albinoni (1671-1751) was a Venetian composer. In his lifetime he was best known for his operas (between 50 and 81), but most of these are alas lost. Part of his instrumental work survives, mostly sonatas and concerti for strings. He was also one of the few Baroque composers who produced concerti for oboe. The "Adagio in G minor" from the "Concerto for Oboe" has two oddities. First of all, it has been ascribed to Albinoni, but it was published in 1958 by Remo Giazotto, who claimed to have found only a few of the opening measures and to have completed the work himself. Secondly, although its title refers to the oboe, many recordings don't use this instrument at all. In many of the popular recordings a string quartet plays the melody, and a church organ delivers the basso continuo. "Didone abbandonata" was the title of multiple operas: February 1724 by Domenico Natale Sarri, December 1724 by Albinoni, 1726 by Leonardo Vinci, 1742 by Johann Adolf Hasse, and so on. It tells the story of Queen Dido of Carthage who has to take leave from her lover Aeneas, who sails to Italy. Struck with grief, Dido commits suicide on a pyre. Antonio Maria Abbatini was a composer whose biography leaves some ambiguity. He may have been born either in 1595 or in 1609-1610. (Perhaps he had a brother named Antonio too). Antonio Maria Abbatini died in 1677 or 1679. He worked primarily in Rome, and left us many works of sacred music. He also produced three operas, but these are no longer performed. Adolfati (1722-1760) and Amato (1629-1670) are two other Italian baroque composers.

From Quiz A Prayer at the Opera

Answer: Hansel and Gretel

"Hansel and Gretel" was written by the German composer Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921), and its premiere in 1893 was conducted by another composer, Richard Strauss. The "Evening Prayer" is sung by Hansel and Gretel after they have got lost on the forest, where they have been sent by their mother to pick strawberries. In response to the prayer, 14 angels come to protect them while they sleep.

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

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.

From Quiz The Sopranos

Answer: Nellie Melba

Nellie Melba was the stage name of Helen Porter Mitchell (1861-1931), a famous Australian soprano. She lived in Europe during the 1890s, singing in London and Paris. In 1904, Camille Saint-Saens composed the opera "Hélène" especially for her singing the title character. Melba first tried recording some arias in 1895 on wax cylinders. But the result didn't please her at all. Fortunately, she decided to give it another try when the disc records became more popular than cylinder recordings. And so we have a 1904 disc with Nellie Melba singing "Sempre Libera" from Verdi's opera "La Traviata". Melba also recorded Puccini's "La Bohème" in 1906 and "Tosca" in 1910. Elisabeth Frösslind (1793-1861) was a Swedish soprano. Josepha Hofer (1758-1819) was a German soprano, best known as the first to sing the role of "The Queen of the Night" in Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute". Maria Malibran (1808-1836) was a French mezzo-soprano. All these red herrings died before the disc recording technique was invented.

From Quiz Hero in Disguise

Answer: Gilda

In G.Verdi's "Rigoletto", Gilda dressed up as a man to knock on the door of a murderer's house at midnight to sacrifice herself instead of her treacherous lover, Duke of Mantua. If she had not done it, the murderer Sparafucile would have killed the Duke following the orders of Gilda's father, Rigoletto, who wanted to avenge his daughter's seduction.

From Quiz Various Vacancies: Ten Terrific Tenors

Answer: Turandot

Pavarotti (1935-2007) began his career in 1961, singing the roles of Rodolfo in "La Bohème" in Reggio Emilia (Italy) and the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's "Rigoletto" in Vienna (Austria). In 1990, Pavarotti teamed up with his friends Placido Domingo and José Carreras for a concert in Rome, preceding the finals of the World Cup Soccer. "Nessun Dorma" was a solo aria by Pavarotti, but the three companions sang it as one of the encores. All operas listed were composed by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924). "La Bohème" (1896) contains the famous tenor aria "Che Gelida Manina", sung by Rodolfo. "Tosca" (1900) is known for the tenor solo "Recondita Armonia", sung by the painter Cavaradossi. "Madama Butterfly" (1904) has a tenor role for Lieutenant Pinkerton, who joins the title character in the love duet "Viene la Sera". And in the opera "Turandot" (1926, completed by Puccini's pupil Franco Alfano) the unknown prince (a tenor) bursts out in act 3: "Nessun Dorma".

From Quiz La Stupenda Performs ...

Answer: Dido & Aeneas

"Dido & Aeneas" was Purcell's first opera, which he wrote in stages during the late 1600s. The story is taken from Book IV of the "Aeneid", written by Virgil, and it recounts the love between Dido, the Queen of Carthage, and the Trojan hero Aeneas, then documenting the queen's decline into despair when the Trojan abandons her. Sutherland was only twenty years old when she performed this in a concert in Sydney, but it was enough to showcase her extraordinary vocal agility.

From Quiz Opera Composers and their Librettists

Answer: Lorenzo Da Ponte

Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838) was a Venetian opera librettist and poet. He was a librettist for approx. 28 operas. Salvatore Martirano (1927) is an American composer.

From Quiz Opera Mixture

Answer: Softly Awakes My Heart

'Softly Awakes My Heart' is sung by Delilah who is singing about her love for Samson. Although it is essentially a solo, Samson interjects with singing 'Delilah! Delilah! I love you!'

From Quiz Opera Divas: part 2

Answer: Lily Pons

In a world of zaftig Brunhildes, she became a new standard for glamour which she maintained throughout her career.

From Quiz Operatic Madness

Answer: Orlando

Vivaldi's "Orlando Furioso" is based on the epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto, which takes place during the Saracen invasion of France and features the evil sorceress Alcina, also the subject of an opera by Handel. Orlando, the legendary warrior nephew of the emperor Charlemagne, is consumed with love for the lovely Angelica. Angelica, however, falls for a young Saracen named Medoro; when Orlando finds their names engraved on a tree, jealousy drives him completely mad (hence the title "Furioso") and, among other things, he imagines that he is Orestes, the son of Agamemnon (see q.2). Eventually, however, he regains his wits, forgives Angelica and Medoro, and wishes them well. Marilyn Horne's facility at portraying "trouser roles", particularly of a military nature such as this one, has earned her the nickname "General Horne". She found a tailor-made vehicle in this role, which was originally written to be performed by a castrato.

From Quiz It's All About Opera

Answer: Camille Saint-Saëns

"Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix comme s'ouvrent les fleurs aux baisers de l'aurore..." It is actually a duet, but Dalila sings most of it. If you love opera, you've got to know this. It's brilliant!

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