The Sopranos Trivia Quiz

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.

Answer: Montserrat Caballé

Montserrat Caballé (born 1933) is perhaps the best known of these four spinto sopranos. She started her career in Basel (Switzerland) in 1956, playing Mimi from Puccini's opera "La Bohème". In 1965, she sang the role of Lucrezia Borgia in the eponymous opera by Gaetano Donizetti, which earned her a standing ovation for 25 minutes and international renown.
Caballé made a few recordings with pop artists. The duet "Barcelona" with Freddie Mercury was an instant hit. Later she worked with Vangelis on the movie score to "El Greco", and she also recorded a CD with (among others) Johnny Halliday and Johnny Logan.
Leontyne Price (born 1927) is an American soprano, who ended her opera career in 1985.
Emma Eames (1865-1952) was another American soprano.
Sondra Radvanovsky (born 1969) is yet another American soprano.

Answer: Norma

Callas was born in New York in 1923 into a family of Greek immigrants. Her father shortened the official family name Kalogeropoulos to the more easy pronounced Callas. In 1937, Maria Callas moved with her mother and sister to Athens, Greece.
Maria Callas' professional debut was the role of Beatrice in the operetta "Boccaccio" by Franz von Suppé.
Later roles included (among others) Brünnhilde in Wagner's "Die Walkure" and Elvira in Bellini's "I Puritani", very contrasting roles - and yet performed in the same month. But one of the roles she is perhaps best remembered for, is the title role in Bellini's opera "Norma". In fact, it is this role she performed at her debut in London (1952), at her American debut in Chicago (1954), at her debut with the Metropolitan (1956) and at her first performance in Paris in 1958.
Maria Callas died in 1977.
Callas never sang the role of Pat Nixon: this role is taken from John Adams' opera "Nixon in China", which premiered in 1987, so ten years after Callas died.
Radames is a tenor role from Verdi's "Aida". Callas, as a dramatic coloratura soprano, could not manage a tenor role.
The last red herring, Carmen from the eponymous opera by Georges Bizet, is a bit tricky. Callas did sing this role, but only once - in a studio recording in 1961.

Answer: Anna Netrebko

Anna Netrebko was born in Krasnodar, Russia, in 1971. She debuted in Saint-Petersburg in 1993.
She recorded Glinka's opera "Ruslan and Lyudmila" in 1995 and Prokofiev's operas "Love for Three Oranges" (recorded in 1997) as well as "Betrothal in a Monastery" (recorded in 1998). She also sang Prokofiev's opera "War and Peace", and Rimsky-Korsakov's opera "The Czar's Bride".
Netrebko has also starred in "Manon" by Massenet and several Italian operas ("La Traviata" by Verdi, "La Bohème" by Puccini and three operas by Donizetti, to name only a few examples).
Birgit Nilsson (1918-2005) was a Swedish soprano, known for her German repertoire (Beethoven, Wagner, Richard Strauss).
Régine Crespin (1927-2007) was a French soprano. She has recorded compositions by Berlioz, Offenbach, Wagner and Richard Strauss.
Emma Kirkby (born 1949) is an English soprano, specialised in Baroque compositions. She is known for having sung work by Händel, Purcell, Monteverdi and Pergolesi, to name only a few highlights of her career.

Answer: Mirusia Louwerse

Mirusia Louwerse was born in Brisbane, Australia, in 1985. She graduated from conservatory in 2006 and sang in a few operas, before being hired by André Rieu. Since 2007, she sings various solo arias for Rieu's orchestra.
One of Louwerse's best known arias is the song "Waltzing Mathilda", performed in 2008 on Rieu's Australia tour.
The red herrings are also sopranos: Nellie Melba (1861-1931) was Australian, Mirella Freni (born 1935) is Italian and Elizabeth Caballero (born 1974) is Cuban.

Answer: Yes

Anna Moffo (1932-2006) was an American soprano, of Italian ancestry.
During most of her career, she sang the romantic Italian repertoire: "Don Pasquale" and "L'Elisir d'Amore" by Donizetti, "Madama Butterfly" and "La Bohème" by Puccini, "La Traviata", "Rigoletto" and "Falstaff" by Verdi, "I Pagliacci" by Leoncavallo.
But she also played the main roles in "Faust" by Gounod, "Manon" by Massenet, "Pelléas et Mélisande" by Debussy, "Die Zauberflöte", "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "Don Giovanni" by Mozart.
She also ventured into operettas, having sung the main character in a movie based upon "Die Csardasfürstin" by Emmerich Kalman.

Answer: It is a tenor aria, rearranged for Sarah Brightman's soprano voice

Sarah Brightman (born 1960) is a British soprano. She started her career in 1981 in the musical "Cats" and met her future husband on stage: she married the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1984 (but the marriage didn't last for more than six years).
Sarah Brightman has recorded at least twelve studio albums, at least twelve compilations and at least eight live albums and videos. In this collection, the aria "Nessun Dorma" appears on the studio album "Eden"; on four compilation albums, among which "Classics" (2001) and "Bella Voce" (2009); and on three live albums, including "One Night in Eden" (1999) and "La Luna: Live in Concert" (2001).
"Nessun Dorma" is a famous tenor aria from Giacomo Puccini's opera "Turandot". The libretto was written by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. For the recordings by Sarah Brightman, the aria had to be rearranged to fit a soprano voice.

Answer: Renata Tebaldi

Renata Tebaldi was born in 1922. In 1946, she sang "Dal tuo stellato soglio" from Rossini's "Mose in Egitto". Incredibly, you can find today a recording of this ancient concert on the internet.
Tebaldi was one of the big stars at La Scala in the second half of the forties. But in 1950 Callas also came to perform in the same theater. When Callas criticized Tebaldi's performance as Violetta in Verdi's "La Traviata", the altercation soon led to insults in both directions. At some point Callas made the remark that "comparing Callas to Tebaldi, is as comparing champagne to cognac". Critics made things even worse: they paraphrased this remark as "comparing champagne to Coca Cola".
Tebaldi went on to become one of the stars of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where she sang the main roles in five of the best known operas by Puccini, and at least five operas by Verdi (including "La Traviata").
Renata Tebaldi retired in 1973 and died in 2004.
Claudia Muzio (1889-1936) was an Italian soprano specialized in operas by Verdi and Puccini. In fact, she was the first soprano to sing in Puccini's opera "Il Tabarro" in 1918.
Kiri te Kanawa (born 1944) is a New Zealand soprano, best remembered for her role as Countess Almaviva in Mozart's opera "Le Nozze di Figaro" (a role that earned her a Grammy award in 1984).
Rosa Ponselle (1897-1981) was an American soprano from Italian descent. She debuted in the Metropolitan Opera in New York with Enrico Caruso in "La Forza del Destino" by Verdi.

Answer: Brunnhilde

Deborah Voigt was born in 1960 in a small town in Illinois. She started her professional opera career in the nineties, with a first title role in Richard Strauss' opera "Ariadne auf Naxos". Most of the roles she sings are from German operas, perhaps because she is of German descent.
The Metropolitan organized a complete Ring cycle in 2011-2012, which was also broadcast in HD to hundreds of cinema theatres worldwide.
The main characters in Wagner's Ring cycle are Wotan, the supreme god; his favourite daughter Brunnhilde - the leading Valkyrie; and her lover Siegfried.
In aforesaid production at the Met, Bryn Terfel played Wotan. Deborah Voigt played Brunnhilde for the first time, and Jay Hunter Morris had to stand in for Gary Lehmann, who left the production only a few days before the premiere because of health reasons.
Other notable roles were for Eric Owens as Alberych, Stephanie Blythe as Fricka, Eva Maria Westbroek as Sieglinde. Wendy Bryn Harmer starred as Freia (in "Das Rheingold") and as Gutrune (in "Götterdämmerung").

Answer: Jessye Norman

Did you answer this question correctly? Well, congratulations. It is quite hard to pick the right soprano who sang all of these, for all four have a very varied repertoire.
Jessye Norman (born 1945) sang in the gospel choir when she was only four years old. She studied music at Howard University and the University of Michigan, and then moved to Europe to start her professional career.
She sang the main roles in "Aida" by Verdi, "Tristan and Isolde" by Wagner, "Dido and Aeneas" by Purcell, "Carmen" by Bizet, "La belle Hélène" by Offenbach, "Don Giovanni" by Mozart, "Oedipus Rex" by Stravinsky, "The Makropoulos Affair" by Janacek, "La Damnation de Faust" by Berlioz and "Cavaleria Rusticana" by Mascagni. Furthermore, she sang a secondary role in Rameau's opera "Hippolyte et Aricie", in Poulenc's opera "Dialogue des Carmelites" and in Schoenberg's drama "Erwartung".
Victoria de los Angeles (1923-2005) was a Spanish opera singer. She sang (among many others) compositions by Bach, Beethoven, Bizet, Gounod, Lully, Mascagni, Pergolesi, Purcell, Tchaikovsky, Verdi and Wagner. However, she never did sing any opera by Philippe Rameau.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1915-2006) was a German soprano, and concentrated mainly on German spoken roles. She sang in operas by Mozart, Wagner and Richard Strauss, and she also recorded Verdi's "Messa Da Requiem". However, she never recorded any composition by Janacek or Stravinsky.
Joan Sutherland (1926-2010) was an Australian soprano. She started her career with roles in operas by Handel and Purcell, and also starred in operas by Mozart, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Verdi and Puccini.