It's All About Opera Trivia Quiz

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!

Answer: The Evening Star

"Oh du mein holder Abendstern, wohl grüß ich immer dich so gern..." Wolfram's "Lied an den Abendstern" is a beautiful, melancholy piece. Wolfram feels that Elisabeth is going to die, and he asks the Evening Star to guard her and to greet her when she leaves the earth.

Answer: "The Bride of Lammermoor"

Written by Sir Walter Scott in the first half of the nineteenth century. The book is, as far as I know, not very widely known. The opera is, though. Lucia's "mad scene" is known even to people who are not interested in operas. You may come across excerpts from this aria in several movies, such as "The Fifth Element".

Answer: Turandot

Puccini died in 1924, before he could finish "Turandot". His student Alfano completed the opera, using Puccini's notes and instructions. He did a very good job, don't you think? In case you're interested: The last scene that was written by Puccini himself was the death of Liú, the servant of Calaf's father. Everything that comes after this is no longer Pucini's work, but that of Alfano.

Answer: Stella

Stella is a singer who appears in the prologue and epilogue of the opera (Hoffmann is in love with her as well). Olympia is a doll who looks human and sings like a nightingale; Giulietta is a courtisan who turns out to be scheming; and Antonia, Hoffmann's real, true love, is a young woman who has a wonderful voice but is not allowed to use it to sing, because otherwise she would die as her mother died. Each act has its villain (traditionally all played by the same singer), but the one in the Giulietta act, Dappertutto, is the one to sing the famous "mirror aria".

The even more famous Barcarole "Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour" is from the Giulietta act as well.

Answer: " La Sonnambula" (Vincenzo Bellini)

The somnambulist from the opera of the same name is really only sleepwalking, but she's not mad - unlike the three unfortunate ladies from "Macbeth" (Lady Macbeth), "Lucia di Lammermoor" (Lucia) and "Faust" (Margarethe), respectively, who all kill someone and then go mad (or, in Lucia's case, the other way round).

But without these gory stories, the impressive mad scenes from "Macbeth" and "Lucia" would never have been composed...

Answer: Mephistopheles

A wonderful aria for any basso - the singer can pull out all the stops here and be really "evil". Especially during the passages where Mephisto laughs. Have you ever seen Ruggiero Raimondi or Nicolai Ghiaurov singing this aria? You can practically see how much fun they have being so evil :)

Answer: Gutrune

Think about it: Siegfried is the son of Siegmund and Sieglinde, who are children of Wotan and a human woman. Brünnhilde is the daughter of Wotan and Erda. This makes Brünnhilde a half-sister of Siegmund's parents, and Siegfried is her nephew. The same goes for Waltraute, another daughter of Wotan. Freia is the sister of Fricka, Wotan's wife, that means: Wotan's sister-in-law. And that makes her a grand-aunt of Siegfried, who is Wotan's grandson. Gutrune is actually the only woman in the whole "Ring" who is not at all related to Siegfried.

This is no excuse for his falling for her, but maybe an explanation :)

Answer: "L'Elisir d'Amore" (Donizetti)

A very well known aria from a well known opera, "The Elixir of Love". This is pure Donizetti, and pure Italian belcanto.

Answer: Casta Diva

"Norma" was probably the best role for Maria Callas. I don't know whether the opera as a whole is very well known, but "Casta Diva" surely is. It used to be in the Ford Mondeo commercial, by the way.