Classical-Music.com
The official website of BBC Music Magazine
Question:
In which old English county is Britten's Albert Herring set?
Response:
Wiltshire
Lincolnshire
Suffolk
Correct! The opera is set in the town of Loxford, Suffolk
In which opera was the final exit of lead soprano Eva Turner at the Lyric Opera in Chicago infamously given extra bounce by a trampoline?
Verdi’s 'Aida'
Puccini's 'Tosca'
Massenet's 'Thaïs'
It was Puccini's 'Tosca' – in the final scene the title character throws herself off the battlements of the Castel Sant'Angelo.
Name the 1985 opera, based on a book by Maurice Sendak, whose heroine is a Sealyham Terrier called Jenny.
Oliver Knussen’s 'Higgledy Pigglety Pop!'
Correct!
Alexander Raskatov’s 'A Dog’s Heart'
Jules Henri de Saint George’s Jenny
Which great 20th-century opera singer is commemorated by a statue within a stone’s throw of Oslo Opera House?
Luciano Pavarotti
Kirsten Flagstad
Correct! The statue is of the Norwegian dramatic soprano who died in 1962
Maria Callas
‘God touched me with His little finger and said “write for the theatre, only for the theatre”.’ Which composer said this?
Richard Strauss
Charles Gounod
Giacomo Puccini
Correct! It was the Italian composer whose operas include 'La bohème', 'Tosca' and 'Turandot'
Which actress and comedienne made her Royal Opera House debut as the Duchesse de Crackentorp in Donizetti’s La Fille di Régiment in January 2007?
Nikki Blonsky
Dawn French
Whoopi Goldberg
Which 1859 opera involving an assassination had, for reasons of political sensitivity, to be set in Boston, Massachusetts rather than 18th-century Sweden as originally planned?
Daniel Auber's 'Gustave III'
Verdi's 'Un Ballo in Maschera'
Correct! It is based on the play 'Gustave III', by French playwright Eugène Scribe about the assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden
Schumann's 'Genoveva'
What links the openings of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, Dvořák’s Rusalka and Julia Snapper’s You who will emerge from the flood?
They all begin under water
They all feature a magic ring
They were all premiered in the same place
'She’s sweet on Wagner. I think she’d die for Beethoven. She loves the way Puccini lays down a tune, and Verdi’s always creeping from her room’. Which British group sang these lyrics in their single Rockaria in 1977?
Slade
Mr Big
The Electric Light Orchestra
Radio 3 broadcasts classical music, jazz, world music, new music, arts programmes and drama.