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The Literary Composer's Quiz: From Words to Music
Quizzes
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Progress: 1 of 26 questions
Composers like modern day screenwriters have often looked to literature for their inspiration and have taken novels, poems and plays and have adapted them for the orchestra, the chamber hall or the opera stage. A fun quiz about the relationship between words and music and how they inspire each other.
Though Le nozzi di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) is sung in Italian, Mozart's librettist, Lorenzo de Ponte based this opera on a French play written by which playwright?
Molière
Pierre Beaumarchais
Jean Racine
Alfred de Musset
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Progress: 2 of 26 questions
Aleksandr Pushkin's verse novel Eugene Onegin became an opera of the same name with music composed by which legendary Russian composer?
Aleksandr Borodin
Modest Mussorgsky
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
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Progress: 3 of 26 questions
Aleksandr Pushkin wrote many works of literature - plays, poems and stories - that became operas. Which of the following pieces was NOT adapted for the opera stage?
Ruslan and Ludmila
The Queen of Spades
Boris Gudonov
The Bronze Horseman
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Progress: 4 of 26 questions
Der Erlkönig (sometimes translated as Alder King) was a romance-inspired thriller poem written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe but was successfully turned into an equally thrilling lied by which of the following composers?
Ludwig van Beethoven
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Franz Schubert
Robert Schumann
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Progress: 5 of 26 questions
Giuseppe Verdi composed music for three operas inspired by the plays of William Shakespeare. Which one of the following was NOT inspired by the English bard?
Falstaff
Otello
Macbeth
Don Carlos
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Progress: 6 of 26 questions
Victor Hugo wrote two plays that became the basis for Verdi operas. Which of the following plays was NOT penned by the French Romantic?
Hernani (basis for Ernani)
Love and Intrigue (basis for Luisa Miller)
The Kings Amuses Himself (basis for Rigoletto)
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Progress: 7 of 26 questions
The lines of Greek plays were originally sung by their cast members. Many composers have looked to the classics for material. Which Euripidean play became an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck?
The Trojan Women
Alcestis
Hippolytus
Orestes
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Progress: 8 of 26 questions
Richard Wagner, like J.R.R. Tolkien in the Twentieth Century was inspired by Norse and Germanic literature in creating The Ring. In addition to the Nibelungelied, which one of the following Sagas also was instrumental in inspiring the work of this German opera composer?
Saga of the Volsungs
Grettir's Saga
Njal's Saga
Enil's Saga
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Progress: 9 of 26 questions
Beethoven's 9th Symphony has a choral fourth movement. Who composed the original poem 'Ode an die Freude' (Ode to Joy)?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Friedrich Schiller
Nikolaus Lenau
Friedrich Hölderlin
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Progress: 10 of 26 questions
Hector Berlioz, like Robert Schumann was highly influenced by literature and his Symphonie Fantastique could be regarded as Romantic drama written in notes. He also wrote an opera, Les Troyens inspired by which one of the following classic epics?
The Aeneid
The Iliad
The Odyssey
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Progress: 11 of 26 questions
Berlioz also wrote a symphony entitled 'Harold en Italie', inspired by which one of the following literary figures?
Lord Byron
Benvenuto Cellini
William Shakespeare
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Progress: 12 of 26 questions
Franz Liszt was a prolific composer and virtuoso pianist but he was also a pretty sociable guy (and tough gig, Richard Wagner's father-n-law), and throughout his life came in contact with many literary greats. Whom DIDN'T this gregarious composer meet in his lifetime?
Friedrich Schiller
Victor Hugo
Heinrich Heine
Georges Sand
Alfred de Musset
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Progress: 13 of 26 questions
Robert Schumann wrote Kreisleriana, an eight-movement piece for solo piano inspired by which one of the following German authors?
Jean Paul
Ludwig Tieck
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Progress: 14 of 26 questions
Felix Mendelssohn wrote an Overture and Incidental music for which one of the following Shakespearean comedies?
Love's Labour Lost
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Taming of the Shrew
All's Well that Ends Well
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Progress: 15 of 26 questions
Verdi routinely turned to plays but he fell in love with this novel about a fallen woman. What is the work that inspired the beloved La Traviata?
La Dame aux Camélias
Therese Raquin
Nana
Germinie Lacerteux
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Progress: 16 of 26 questions
Carmen is perhaps France's most famous opera. Georges Bizet used a libretto written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy based on a story of the same name. Who wrote the original tale of the femme fatale gypsy?
Victor Hugo
Alfred de Musset
Proper Mérimée
Alphonse de Lamartine
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Progress: 17 of 26 questions
This Italian literary figure had his play, Cavelleria rusticana adapted into an Opera with music composed by one-hit wonder, Pietro Mascagni. Who was he?
Giovanni Verga
Alessandro Manzoni
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Niccolo Machiavelli
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Progress: 18 of 26 questions
'In the Hall of the Mountain King' is a piece of orchestral music composed by Edvard Grieg. It has appeared notably in numerous commercials, movies and television shows. Grieg wrote it as incidental music for which one of the following plays?
Faust I
Faust II
Peer Gynt
Brand
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Progress: 19 of 26 questions
Both Giacomo Puccini and Jules Massenet adapted this famous French novel into an opera in the late 19th century: which novel?
Lost Illusions
Manon Lescaut
Madame Bovary
Nana
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Progress: 20 of 26 questions
Of the following Austrian composers, who was the one that adapted Georges Rodenbach's Bruges-la-Mort into the opera, Die tote Stadt?
Richard Strauss
Johann Strauss II
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Gustav Mahler
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Progress: 21 of 26 questions
Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra was inspired by which German philosopher?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Arthur Schopenhauer
Ludwig Feuerbach
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
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Progress: 22 of 26 questions
Richard Strauss wrote his Four Last Songs at the end of his life. Three of the songs were based on poems penned by Hermann Hesse. The fourth, Im Abendrot was written by someone else. Who?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nikolaus Lenau
Edward Morike
Joseph von Eichendorff
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Progress: 23 of 26 questions
Dmitri Shostakovich adapted the Russian short story, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District into an opera in 1934. Who was the original teller of this dark tale?
Ivan Bunin
Nikolai Leskov
Sergei Akasakov
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Progress: 24 of 26 questions
Alban Berg adapted which Georg Büchner play into a twelve-tone inspired opera of the same name?
Danton's Death
Leonce and Lena
Woyzeck
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Progress: 25 of 26 questions
Many think of opera as something sung in Italian, German, French or Russian but Benjamin Britten composed several English operas. Billy Budd, for instance, was an opera based on which American author's novella?
Herman Melville
Henry James
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edith Wharton
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Progress: 26 of 26 questions
John Tavener composed 'Eternity's Sunrise'. Of the following Romantic poets, who inspired this beautiful work?
William Blake
John Keats
Lord Byron
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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