A Night at the (Animal) Opera Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Magic Flute

In Mozart's opera, Papageno is a happy-go-lucky character who acts as a comic foil to the hero, Tamino. Just as Tamino finds his true love, Pamina, by the end of the opera, Papageno finds his own counterpart in Papagena, who is a female birdcatcher.

Answer: La gazza ladra

"La gazza ladra" was first performed in 1817 at the opera house of La Scala, Milan. "La scala di seta" (1812) is "The Silken Ladder". "La donna del lago" (1819) is "The Lady of the Lake", based on the poem of that name by Sir Walter Scott. "Il barbiere di Siviglia" (1816) is "The Barber of Seville", which is what would now be called a "prequel" to Mozart's earlier "the Marriage of Figaro".

Answer: Harrison Birtwistle

Birtwistle's chamber opera is based on a folk tale from the north of England about two rival shepherds, and contains a chorus of sheep. The origin of the sheep-counting rhyme is extremely ancient, and was so localised that many of the Yorkshire dales (valleys) had their own individual variations.

Answer: Curlew River

"Curlew River" was the first of Britten's "church parables" to be written, in 1964, and was based on a Japanese Noh play. Both "The Burning Fiery Furnace" (1966) and "The Prodigal Son" (1968) are based on stories from the Bible. Each of them was given its first performance in St Bartholomew's Church, Orford, Suffolk.

Answer: Chipmunk

Janacek's "The Cunning Little Vixen" may be the only (and was certainly the first) opera to be based on a newspaper comic strip. The animal characters are those which Janacek would have come across in his native Moravian woodlands. Chipmunks are mostly found in North America, and do not occur naturally in Europe.

Answer: Fafnir

In "Das Rheingold", the giant Fafner, kills his brother, Fasolt, during a quarrel over the treasure which they have been given in payment for building Valhalla for Wotan and the other gods. Using the magic tarnhelm, he transforms himself into a dragon in order to guard the treasure. In "Siegfried", he is killed by the hero Siegfried, who thereby obtains both the tarnhelm and the magic ring which gives Wagner's operatic cycle its name.

The picture shows Arthur Rackham's illustration of Fafnir from a series of illustrations he produced based on scenes from the "Ring" operas.

Answer: Herring

"Albert Herring" is a comic opera about an innocent greengrocer's boy who is chosen to be his village's May King because none of the village girls are "pure" enough to be crowned as the traditional May Queen. On the day of the May Day festival, two other young people, Sid and Nancy, lace Albert's lemonade with rum.

While the village is shocked by his drunken behaviour, Albert gains the courage to stand up to his nagging mother.

Answer: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

"The Golden Cockerel", written in 1906-07, was Rimsky-Korsakov's last opera. A satire on Russian imperialism, it proved to be a bit too close to the bone for the Imperial court, which promptly banned all performances. It was eventually performed in 1909, but sadly the composer had died the previous year.

The bird of the title is a magical creature presented to King Dodon (a not very well disguised portrait of Tsar Nicholas II) by the Court Astrologer.

Answer: The male protagonist, who is blunt and boorish

Walton's "The Bear" is based on a one-act comic play by Anton Chekhov. "The Bear" of the title is Grigory Smirnov, who is a creditor of Yelena Popova's late husband. During the play, Smirnov and Popova fall in love, despite spending much of the action arguing furiously with each other, at one point going so far as to threaten each other with loaded pistols.

Answer: Die Fledermaus

"Die Fledermaus" is Strauss's most popular and frequently-performed operatic work. The title refers, slightly obscurely, to the fancy-dress costume of a bat, which was worn by one of the characters in an incident that occurs before the action of "Die Fledermaus" actually starts. Of the other options, "Der Schmetterling" is a butterfly, "die Hummel" is a bumblebee, and "die Nachtigall" is a nightingale (itself the title of an opera by Stravinsky).