Ten Nights at the Opera Trivia Quiz

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.

Answer: La clemenza di Tito

Composed for a libretto in Italian written by Caterino Mazzolà but inspired by the more famous poet Metastasio, it debuted like the "Flute" in 1791. Originally, the opera included for the part of Sesto a "castrato", a male singer with a soprano voice due to the infamous operation performed before puberty. Nowadays the part is sung by a mezzo-soprano (female).
Not among the most famous of Mozart's works, seeing and hearing at La Scala is nevertheless a wonderful experience.

Answer: Le nozze di Figaro

Also known as "Marriage of Figaro", it's a comic opera on a Lorenzo Da Ponte's libretto based on a comedy by Beaumarchais, who wrote also the play "The Barber of Seville". Compared to the plays, the libretto is "censored", with all political references removed. A very enjoyable show, especially the Overture and the delightful aria "Non più andrai farfallone amoroso".

Answer: Andrea Chénier

Performed for the first time at La Scala in 1896, it's considered a typical verismo work: verismo means "realism" in Italian, and it was an artistic genre of post-romantic period, in literature, music and painting, derived from French naturalism. The opera provides rich material for star tenors: Del Monaco, Domingo, Pavarotti etc.

Answer: Don Giovanni

Mozart/Da Ponte again. The opera premiered in 1787. Don Juan's saga inspired many authors, like Molière, Tirso de Molina, Goldoni, Byron, and many composers. Mozart's "Don Giovanni" is considered the best of them all.
The main character is the absolute hero (or anti-hero); maybe that's why in the version I saw, the director decided that he had to be the last man standing, while all the other characters fell in the depths of Hell. Don Giovanni can't die.

Answer: Aida

This spectacular opera by Giuseppe Verdi features a grandiose ancient Egyptian setting, and premiered in Cairo in 1871.
Besides the orchestra, the score includes some instruments to be played onstage, including six very long "Egyptian trumpets" designed and built for the purpose.
Extremely successful, a feast for set designers, to this day it is one of the most performed operas in the world.

Answer: Christoph Willibald Gluck

Gluck is the only composer among the names listed, of course. He wanted to reform opera, proposing a model where the drama was the thing, instead of ballet, staging or singer's acrobatic virtuosity. "Orfeo" is the result. It was composed on an Italian libretto by Ranieri de Calzabigi and first performed in Vienna in 1762. The French version was premiered 12 years later with a libretto by Pierre-Louis Moline.
Toscanini loved this opera. I..well, so-so.

Answer: Attila

Giuseppe Verdi was young (33) when he composed "Attila"; he was attracted by the subject, with a taste of German epic saga maybe more suitable for Wagner. But it contains two very "Italian" themes: the people fleeing from the city of Aquileia, destroyed by Attila, later founded Venice; the role of the Pope in saving Rome from the Huns.

Answer: Modest Mussorgsky

A so-called "national musical drama" in five acts: so long that the composer died before its completion. Rimsky-Korsakov completed, heavily revised and recomposed it. Later on Dmitri Shostakovich gave us a version more faithful to the original that Mussorgsky had in mind. Or so it seems. The latter version is the one I saw. A very "trendy" one, I dare say. The first act was staged in an oil refinery, with singers clad in leather, smartphones in their hands. But the "Dance of the Persian Slaves" was great.

Answer: "Il Trovatore" (or "The Troubadour")

It premiered in Rome in 1853, another Verdi's sensational success, with a very dramatic plot, with gypsies burnt at the stake, murders (of the wrong victim), poisoning, unhappy love etc.
Performing operas with puppets was an old tradition in Italian theatres; in Milan a dynasty of puppeteers is still active. They are called Colla and theirs was the "Trovatore" version I saw staged at the Piccolo, that after La Scala is the most famous theatre in Milan, founded by director Giorgio Strehler.