Trivia quiz game!

[(poco) Sforzando]

My turn again. A 5-part question on Shakespeare in music. (No unsungs here, no curves, should be pretty easy.)

1. This composer never wrote one Shakespearean opera he had contemplated for years, but managed to write three operas based on a total of five Shakespeare plays. Name the composer, all four works, and all six plays.

2. This composer wrote an overture that sounds like it should be to a Shakespearean play, but isn't.

3. This fictional composer wrote an opera based on a Shakespearean play, but his story is more Marlovian.

4. This composer wrote one opera based on a Shakespearean play, but uses a text based on Shakespeare in one of his other operas, and wrote another major non-operatic work based on yet another Shakespearean play.

5. This composer wrote an opera that actually uses a Shakespearean play as its libretto.

[Brian]

3. This fictional composer wrote an opera based on a Shakespearean play, but his story is more Marlovian.

This sounds like Adrian Leverkuhn (spelling?)?

Not a correct answer so far as I know (although maybe he is composer #1) but after seeing Verdi's Falstaff for the first time (December's Met production), I read the original Shakespeare play and was astonished at how much better Arrigo Boito's text is than the original play.

EDIT: Oh! #4 is Berlioz, I assume (Beatrice - opera; Romeo - non-opera), but I don't know what the Shakespearean text in another opera is.

[mc ukrneal]

My turn again. A 5-part question on Shakespeare in music. (No unsungs here, no curves, should be pretty easy.)

1. This composer never wrote one Shakespearean opera he had contemplated for years, but managed to write three operas based on a total of five Shakespeare plays. Name the composer, all four works, and all six plays.

2. This composer wrote an overture that sounds like it should be to a Shakespearean play, but isn't.

3. This fictional composer wrote an opera based on a Shakespearean play, but his story is more Marlovian.

4. This composer wrote one opera based on a Shakespearean play, but uses a text based on Shakespeare in one of his other operas, and wrote another major non-operatic work based on yet another Shakespearean play.

5. This composer wrote an opera that actually uses a Shakespearean play as its libretto.

I'm not sure you meant 5 plays in #1. It's Verdi - King Lear is the one he never finished (based on the play of the same name). Macbeth was based on Macbeth, Otello on Othello, and Falstaff on Henry IV and Merry Wives of Windsor.

[listener]

EDIT: Oh! #4 is Berlioz, I assume (Beatrice - opera; Romeo - non-opera), but I don't know what the Shakespearean text in another opera is.

King Lear Overture, perhaps

[Florestan]

My turn again. A 5-part question on Shakespeare in music. (No unsungs here, no curves, should be pretty easy.)

1. This composer never wrote one Shakespearean opera he had contemplated for years, but managed to write three operas based on a total of five Shakespeare plays. Name the composer, all four works, and all six plays.

It's not six, but five, methinks.

Giuseppe Verdi.

Macbeth, Otello, Falstaff (based on The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henri IV). He never managed to write Re Lear.

2. This composer wrote an overture that sounds like it should be to a Shakespearean play, but isn't.

Beethoven, Coriolan Overture

3. This fictional composer wrote an opera based on a Shakespearean play, but his story is more Marlovian.

Adrian Leverkühn from Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus wrote Love's Labour's Lost.

4. This composer wrote one opera based on a Shakespearean play, but uses a text based on Shakespeare in one of his other operas, and wrote another major non-operatic work based on yet another Shakespearean play.

This is rather puzzling. At first sight it has to be Berlioz, but he wrote only one Shakespearean opera, Beatrice and Benedict based on Much Ado About Nothing. By "one of his other operas" you might mean Romeo et Juliette, only it's not an opera proper but a symphonie dramatique. His "another major non-operatic work based on yet another Shakespearean play" has to be Le roi Lear overture, but then again it's not that major.

So, it's either Berlioz or that was indeed tricky and it's in fact another composer which I can't identify based on the provided data. 

5. This composer wrote an opera that actually uses a Shakespearean play as its libretto.

Richard Wagner's Das Liebesverbot? Otto Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor? Charles Gounod's Romeo et Juliette? Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet? Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Or do you mean the libretto is exactly the play, line-by-line?

[mc ukrneal]

Or do you mean the libretto is exactly the play, line-by-line?

If so, I think it's the Britten, though I believe there was one line that was slightly changed.

[(poco) Sforzando]

This sounds like Adrian Leverkuhn (spelling?)?

Not a correct answer so far as I know (although maybe he is composer #1) but after seeing Verdi's Falstaff for the first time (December's Met production), I read the original Shakespeare play and was astonished at how much better Arrigo Boito's text is than the original play.

EDIT: Oh! #4 is Berlioz, I assume (Beatrice - opera; Romeo - non-opera), but I don't know what the Shakespearean text in another opera is.

Correct on 3 and 4. Let's continue thinking where another Shakespearean passage appears in a Berlioz opera.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I'm not sure you meant 5 plays in #1. It's Verdi - King Lear is the one he never finished (based on the play of the same name). Macbeth was based on Macbeth, Otello on Othello, and Falstaff on Henry IV and Merry Wives of Windsor.

I'm sure I did. Henry IV is two plays; Boito quotes from both of them.

[(poco) Sforzando]

If so, I think it's the Britten, though I believe there was one line that was slightly changed.

Correct. To use the Shakespeare play as libretto means using the play, not a translation or adaptation. There have been literally hundreds of plays based on Shakespeare, but how many actually used his own words?

Actually, I can think of another, so let's keep this going, and by a well-known composer. It was a shortened version of a long play, and its most famous characteristic was that it was intended to inaugurate the opening of a famous opera house but bombed completely, to the composer's great humiliation.

So where in another Berlioz opera does a passage explicitly based on Shakespeare occur?

[(poco) Sforzando]

It's not six, but five, methinks.

Giuseppe Verdi.

Macbeth, Otello, Falstaff (based on The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henri IV). He never managed to write Re Lear.

Beethoven, Coriolan Overture

Adrian Leverkühn from Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus wrote Love's Labour's Lost.

This is rather puzzling. At first sight it has to be Berlioz, but he wrote only one Shakespearean opera, Beatrice and Benedict based on Much Ado About Nothing. By "one of his other operas" you might mean Romeo et Juliette, only it's not an opera proper but a symphonie dramatique. His "another major non-operatic work based on yet another Shakespearean play" has to be Le roi Lear overture, but then again it's not that major.

So, it's either Berlioz or that was indeed tricky and it's in fact another composer which I can't identify based on the provided data. 

Richard Wagner's Das Liebesverbot? Otto Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor? Charles Gounod's Romeo et Juliette? Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet? Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Or do you mean the libretto is exactly the play, line-by-line?

Correct on Beethoven. So everything has been answered except for one point about Berlioz.

[Florestan]

Correct on Beethoven. So everything has been answered except for one point about Berlioz.

Hah! I finally got it! Lélio, ou le Retour à la Vie  ends with Fantaisie sur la "Tempête" de Shakespeare. 

But is it an opera proper? 

[Florestan]

Actually, I can think of another, so let's keep this going, and by a well-known composer. It was a shortened version of a long play, and its most famous characteristic was that it was intended to inaugurate the opening of a famous opera house but bombed completely, to the composer's great humiliation.

Samuel Barber - Antony and Cleopatra for the opening of the (new) Metropolitan Opera House.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Hah! I finally got it! Lélio, ou le Retour à la Vie  ends with Fantaisie sur la "Tempête" de Shakespeare. 

But is it an opera proper? 

No, it isn't. I am thinking of an opera.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Samuel Barber - Antony and Cleopatra for the opening of the (new) Metropolitan Opera House.

Correct of course. I am inclined to give the win to Florestan, having answered the most parts of my set of questions.

But here's a bonus, and it's really, really hard, much harder than even the Berlioz question no one has gotten yet: In what Stravinsky opera does the librettist (or one of the librettists) briefly allude to a line from a Shakespearean tragedy already mentioned in this thread? You have to identify not only the opera, but the actual line.

[mc ukrneal]

No, it isn't. I am thinking of an opera.

I have not seen it, but I think you are talking about Beatrice and Benedict? I believe it was based on Much ado About Nothing, but I thought that Berlioz himself wrote the libretto? Am I mixing it up with something else?

Florestan totally won this one! I never would have matched the Beethoven one.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I have not seen it, but I think you are talking about Beatrice and Benedict? I believe it was based on Much ado About Nothing, but I thought that Berlioz himself wrote the libretto? Am I mixing it up with something else?

Florestan totally won this one! I never would have matched the Beethoven one.

Beethoven's Coriolan Overture is not based on S's Coriolanus, but on a play on the same story by one Henrich Joseph von Colin.

There are three Berlioz works alluded to in my question 4: one is the opera based on a play (Beatrice/Much Ado), one is a major non-operatic work (Romeo), and the third is a passage in another Berlioz opera (yet unnamed) based on a text by Shakespeare. C'mon, guys, it's not as if Berlioz wrote that many operas.

[Florestan]

There are three Berlioz works alluded to in my question 4: one is the opera based on a play (Beatrice/Much Ado), one is a major non-operatic work (Romeo), and the third is a passage in another Berlioz opera (yet unnamed) based on a text by Shakespeare. C'mon, guys, it's not as if Berlioz wrote that many operas.

Les Troyens !!! "On such a night as this" (from The Merrchant of Venice) in the Dido/Aeneas duet. Boy, you made me dig really, really deep... 

[(poco) Sforzando]

Les Troyens !!! "On such a night as this" (from The Merrchant of Venice) in the Dido/Aeneas duet. Boy, you made me dig really, really deep... 

Good, good! Now it's your turn to pose a question.

(Still would like someone to attempt my Stravinsky/Shakespeare one, but let's not hold up the flow for that.)

[Florestan]

Okay, here is mine - an off-the-top-of-my-head, easy one.

This man showed considerable literary talent at an early age but he eventually became famous for his music. Conversely, this other man displayed considerable early musical talent but he eventually became famous for his writings. Yet another two men never made up their mind between music and writing, but one is more famous for his writings than for his music, while the other is more famous for his music than for his writings. Name them. 

[Brian]

I'm inclined to guess Nietzsche for never-decided-but-writings-won-out man and Theodor Adorno for switched-to-writings man. There could be other answers too!