Opera Since the Second World War Quiz

Answer: Peter Grimes

The first performance of "Peter Grimes" took place at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London on the 7th June 1945, only a month after VE Day (8th May). It was conducted by Reginald Goodall, who is now best remembered for his Wagner performances with English National Opera in the 1970s and 80s. Another conductor involved in the premiere was Edward Downes, who played the horn in the orchestra.

Answer: Sergey Prokofiev

Prokofiev's final opera, based on a novel by Boris Polevoy, is probably his least performed. He chose the subject deliberately as one that would appeal to the Communist authorities, and this perhaps did not help its chances abroad.

Answer: Manon Lescaut

Henze, who was born in 1926, has to date (2003) composed 15 operas in total, including "The Bassarids" and "The English Cat". He claims that his latest, entitled "L'Upupa and the Triumph of Filial Love", will be his last. It received its world premiere at Salzburg on August 12th 2003.

Answer: The Devils of Loudun

Penderecki's opera was premiered in Hamburg in June 1969. Whiting's play was itself inspired by an earlier novel by Aldous Huxley. The actual events on which these various treatments were based also inspired Ken Russell's 1971 film "The Devils", which had music by Peter Maxwell Davies - who wrote the opera "Resurrection". "The Black Mask" is another Penderecki opera, and "The Fiery Angel" is by Prokofiev: like "The Devils of Loudun", it features a chorus of hysterical nuns.

Answer: Karlheinz Stockhausen

The first opera in the cycle, "Donnerstag" ("Thursday") was given its premiere in 1981 at no less a venue than La Scala, Milan. To date, "Samstag" ("Saturday"), "Montag" ("Monday"), "Dienstag" ("Tuesday") and "Freitag" ("Friday") have been performed. "Mittwoch" ("Wednesday") is awaiting its first complete performance (two dates having been announced and then cancelled), while "Sonntag" ("Sunday") is nearing completion. Stockhausen's avowed intention that the operas should eventually be given together, on successive days of the week, is looking increasingly unlikely.

But whatever you think of the operas as music, you have to admire the composer's ambition and dedication to a project whose scale dwarfs even Wagner's "Ring".

Answer: Gyorgy Ligeti

Ligeti (born in 1923) revised the opera extensively in 1997. Whatever the musical merits of this revision, one can only regret the change of names of two major characters: the lovers who in 1997 are called Amanda and Amando, were in 1978 known as Clitoria and Spermando... Of the other composers mentioned here, Kodaly's opera "Hary Janos" is best known outside Hungary from the delightful suite drawn from it, and Bartok's "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" is a one-act masterpiece. Kurtag is a contemporary and friend of Ligeti, but has not to date written an opera.

Answer: Saint Francis of Assisi

Messiaen's five-hour opera "Saint Francois d'Assise" was premiered at the Opera National de Paris on November 28th 1983. No less an operatic figure than Richard Wagner contemplated an opera on the life of Jesus of Nazareth, while Saint Teresa and Pope Pius IV appear respectively in the operas "Four Saints in Three Acts" by Virgil Thomson and "Palestrina" by Hans Pfitzner.

Answer: Italo Calvino

"Un re in ascolto" was first performed at the Kleines Festspielhaus, Salzburg, in August 1984, with a plot very loosely derived from Shakespeare's "The Tempest". Eco and Sanguinetti, like Calvino, were friends of Berio and collaborated with him on other works, while Moravia wrote the libretto for Mario Peragallo's 1954 opera "La Gita in Campagna".

Answer: Richard Meale

Meale's second opera, "Mer de Glace" ("Sea of Ice"), was first performed in 1991 by Australian Opera at the Sydney Opera House. As an aside, in the 1960s Patrick White himself worked for a while with Peter Sculthorpe on a projected opera, which sadly failed to come to fruition.

Answer: The Vanishing Bridegroom

"The Vanishing Bridegroom" was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, in October 1990 by Scottish Opera, and given by the same company at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in December of the same year. "Blond Eckbert" (1993) is also by Weir, but based on a story by Ludwig Tieck. Of the other two operas, "Gawain" is by Harrison Birtwistle and "New Year" is by Michael Tippett.

Answer: Life With an Idiot

Vova, the "Idiot" of the title, sings only the word "Ekh". The opera tells how Vova is sent to live in the home of the opera's protagonist, known only as "I", where he seduces first "I"'s wife and then "I" himself. In the end, it is "I" who ends up in an asylum.

The opera was premiered in 1998 by Netherlands Opera, conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich. "Gesualdo" and "Historia von D. Johann Fausten" were both premiered within a month of each other, in 1995. "The Eleventh Commandment" is a much earlier work, completed in 1962, and has yet to be staged.

Answer: Aulis Sallinen

Other operas by Sallinen include "The Red Line" and "The King Goes Forth To France". The three other composers listed have all produced distinguished operas, notably Aho's "Before We All Have Drowned" (1999) and Saariaho's "L'amour de Loin" (2000). Merikanto's masterpiece, "Juha", is strictly speaking outside the ambit of this quiz, since it was composed in 1923, but it was not given its stage premiere until 1963.

Answer: The quincentenary of Columbus's discovery of America

Christopher Columbus is believed to have first sighted land on 12 October 1492, and it was 500 years to the day, on 12 October 1992, that Glass's opera had its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House. "The Met" did commission an opera for its own centenary in 1991, but this was John Corigliano's "The Ghosts of Versailles".

Answer: Margaret Atwood

Ruders' opera was given its UK premiere by English National Opera at the London Coliseum in April 2003, and its US premiere by Minnesota Opera the following month. No-one has as far as I know tried to set any of the works of Salman Rushdie or Martin Amis to music.

However, two of Doris Lessing's novels have been turned into operas by Philip Glass: "The Making of the Representative for Planet 8" in 1986, and "The Marriages Between Zones 3, 4 and 5" in 1997.

Answer: Sophie's Choice

Both the film and the opera were based on the novel by William Stryon. Although some critics felt that the opera's four-hour length told against it, and were not entirely convinced by its approachably tonal musical language, "Sophie's Choice" was a sell-out at all performances.