Musicals Set in Europe Trivia Quiz

Based on Charles Dickens's 'Oliver Twist', this musical from Lionel Bart follows the adventures of a young orphan from the workhouse through an apprenticeship with an undertaker, from which he escapes and ends up in London, part of a gang of pickpockets. He is finally recognised as the missing grandson of the kindly elderly man whose house they had been robbing when Oliver was arrested.

The original West end run (2618 performances starting in June of 1960) was followed by an equally successful Broadway production (starting in January 1963) for which it won 3 of the 10 Tony awards for which it was nominated. Professional productions around the word followed, including a number of UK and Broadway revivals, and a 1968 film adaptation brought the show to a whole new audience.

Memorable songs from the show include 'Food, Glorious Food', sung by the workhouse orphans; 'Consider Yourself', in which Oliver is introduced to the gang by the Artful Dodger; 'You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two', in which Fagin provides him with basic pickpocketing techniques; and 'As Long as He Needs Me', sung by Nancy first to declare her love for Bill Sykes despite his brutality, and later to demonstrate her desire to protect Oliver.

Inspired by the Ingmar Bergman movie 'Smiles of a Summer Night', this musical with music and lyrics from Stephen Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler follows the romantic lives of several Swedish couples in the year 1900. The title is a direct translation of Mozart's serenade 'Eine kleine nachtmusik'.

Middle-aged Fredrik has recently married (but not yet had intimate relations with) Anne, a year younger than his son Henrik. They attend a performance in which Desiree, his former lover, stars. Desiree is currently having an affair with Carl-Magnus, who remains in love with his wife Charlotte. Needless to say, it all gets quite complicated before Anne and Henrik run off together and Fredrik and Desiree (along with their illegitimate daughter Fredrika) acknowledge that they have never stopped loving each other.

The most familiar song from 'A Little Night Music' is 'Send in the Clowns'. Early in Act II Desiree sings this as she reflects on the follies she has committed, especially in rejecting Fredrik's proposals years ago; it is reprised as a duet between Fredrik and Desiree at the end of the show.

Based on Victor Hugo's novel of the same name, 'Les Miserables' follows Jean Valjean's life on the run from the law (in the form of Inspector Javert) as he attempts to rebuild his life, getting swept up in the tempestuous times of the 1832 Paris Uprising which forms the focus of Act II. The show started life as a concept album in 1980, followed shortly after by a stage production (both in French). The English language version, opening in the West End in 1985, added a prologue to give the story of Valjean's earlier life. Herbert Kretzmer's lyrics were not a translation of the original songs by by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, but Claude-Michel Schönberg's. music remained essentially the same.

It is surprising, in retrospect, to read the original reviews, which were fairly negative. Audiences, however, felt differently, and it became one of the iconic musicals. In 2010, there were three separate versions available in London: the original production, still running at the Queen's Theatre; the 25th Anniversary touring production, at the Barbican Centre; and the 25th Anniversary concert (on October 3) at London's O2 Arena.

Not only did 'Les Mis' become (at the time) the second-longest running Broadway show, it generated multiple touring and international companies, not to mention a 2012 film adaptation. The first Broadway revival was only three years after the closing of the original production. It has been translated into over 20 languages, including a translation of the English show back into French - in 1991, the Montreal production was performed in French for five shows a week, and in English for the other three.

With so many versions, it is difficult to say which song was sung when, as even the most famous moments have been shuffled over the years. 'I Dreamed a Dream', Fantine's lament on the misery of her life, came immediately after she had been fired early in Act I, but in the original French production (and the 2012 movie) she sang it after she had already been forced to commence work as a prostitute. Susan Boyle gained international fame when she performed it in 2009 on the television show 'Britain's Got Talent'. The powerful 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' is sung by the students as they prepare to man the barricades near the end of Act I, and (in the English adaptation) by the entire cast at the finale, where it becomes a call for world peace.

Joe Masteroff's book for 'Cabaret' was adapted from John van Duten's play 'I am a Camera', which in turn was based on Christopher Isherwood's 1939 novel recalling his time in the early 1930s as a pleasure-seeking British expatriate, 'Goodbye to Berlin'. Many of the characters in the play are based on Isherwood's acquaintances, as are the main plot incidents. As John Kander and Fred Ebb worked with Masteroff and producer Harold Prince on developing their musical adaptation, quite a lot of character and plot detail was changed, until finally the musical was essentially two shows in one. One focus was the Kit Kat Klub, where the Master of Ceremonies (brilliantly portrayed by Joel Grey when the show opened on Broadway in 1966) manipulates the acts to provide the decadent sleaze his audience desires. The second story line is in the outside world, a world populated by (adapted versions of) the characters from Isherwood's novel.

The show bounces between the two stories, showing them to be inextricably linked. It starts with the EmCee welcoming the show's audience ('Willkommen') while the cabaret performers prepare for their show. Young American Cliff arrives in Berlin, where he manages to get a room in a boarding house before going to the Kit Kat Klub and meeting Sally Bowles, a singer who is determined to ignore the ugly reality that surrounds her. This is expressed in the way between her song 'Cabaret' ignores and contrasts with the menacing 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me'.

The 1972 film, in which Joel Grey reprised his role as the EmCee and Liza Minelli (who had unsuccessfully auditioned for the part on Broadway) featured as Sally Bowles, was so successful that some of the changes it made became incorporated in later versions of the stage show.

Do you really need to hear the plot summary of this musical that romanticizes the story of the von Trapp family's emigration from Austria to avoid the 1938 Anschluss in which Austria was annexed to Germany? A postulant who is uncertain of her intention to becom and his houseful of children. They all sing beautifully, and escape. The 1959 Broadway cast had Mary Martin as Maria and Theodore Bikel as Captain von Trapp, and won five Tony awards, including Best Musical.

Between the original show and the 1965 movie starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, many of the songs (music by Richard Rogers, lyrics from Oscar Hammerstein II) have become standards. The title song was actually recorded by Patti Page before the show opened, as part of a publicity plan. In 'Do-Re-Mi' Maria introduces the children to the solfčge system for naming musical notes in a scale; while that may not seem terribly useful, the song also demonstrates the art of the pun, and has since been many a child's introduction to that concept. 'My Favourite Things' is almost Pollyanna-like in its defiant cheerfulness, while 'Climb Every Mountain' is a more sombre exhortation to follow your dreams, one which has been covered by Tony Bennett, Andy Williams, Shirley Bassey, Tammy Wynette, and a zillion more.

'Edelweiss', in which the flower's simple beauty is evoked as symbolising the life that must be left behind, was the last song added to the show, and the last one for which Oscar Hammerstein provided lyrics, as he died less than a month after the show opened.

The plot of this 1963 musical will sound familiar to many who haven't even heard of it: two people working in the same shop don't get on in person, but have become pen pals who connected through lonely-hearts ads. Yes, in 1998 the two secret correspondents were played by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in 'You've Got Mail', but you may also have come across Miklós László's 1937 play 'Parfumerie', the 1940 film 'The Shop Around the Corner', or the 1949 musical 'In the Good Old Summertime'. Apparently great stories improve with repetition.

In 'She Loves Me', set in 1934 Budapest, Georg Nowack is an assistant manager in Maraczek's Parfumerie and Amalia Balash is a woman he hires as a shop assistant near the start of the show. They bicker their way through the first act, while consoling each other via their anonymous correspondence. during the second act they come to realise that they are actually in love with each other.

Harold Prince directed the original production, which featured Daniel Massey as Georg and Barbara Cook as Amalia. The show manage a run of just over 300 shows, but the music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick did not include any of the kind of memorable tunes that lead to revivals because 'everyone knows that song'. Plans for a movie version starring Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke were shelved in 1969 when MGM changed hands and direction. There was a revival in 1993, which ran for about a year. The 2016 Broadway revival was the first Broadway show ever to be live-streamed, on 30 June 2016.

Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick had better luck with the songs for 'Fiddler on the Roof', which opened in 1964 and became the first musical to run for over 3,000 performances. Based on short stories by Sholem Aleichem about life in a small town in the Pale of Settlement (an area of the Russian Empire where Jews were allowed to settle) around the start of the 20th century, the show follows Tevye and his wife Golde as they attempt to preserve their traditional culture while also recognising the need of their five daughters to live their own lives in a changing world. The title of the show reflects their precarious position, foreshadowing their eventual departure from Anatevka.

The original production, which featured Zero Mostel as Tevye, won nine Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Book. The first West End production (in 1967) featured Chaim Topol, and he was selected to play the role in the 1971 film. While there was some controversy about the way the show romanticised the source material, and its failure to fully reflect the harsh reality of life in the Pale at that time, it did find a way to bring some version of that story to an audience that would previously have been unaware of it all. A large part of what made it work came from the memorable musical numbers.

The first number, 'Tradition', makes the audience familiar with the way of life in Anatevka which Tevye wishes to maintain in the face of turmoil; when he faces another setback in the form of a lame horse, he ask God why life has to be so hard ('If I Were a Rich Man'); in 'To Life' he celebrates arranging a marriage for his daughter Tzeitel with the village butcher; when Tzeitel insists she will not marry the butcher because she is in love with a penniless tailor, he comes to terms with this in 'Tevye's Monologue' and along with Golde reflects on how quickly children grow as they watch Tzeitel marry Motel ('Sunrise, Sunset'). In Act II, the other daughters forge their independent ways, and the parents reconcile themselves to the changing ways, despite some regret about the abandonment of the old ways ('Do You Love Me').

This jukebox musical (one that uses music that has already been released and been popular, so that audiences are coming to the show to hear their favorite songs), based on the songs of the Swedish group ABBA used their 1975 hit song for its title. Both Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, who wrote most of the songs, were involved in the show's development prior to its opening in the West End in 1999.

Set on a fictional Greek island, the show is about young Sophie's quest to work out which of three possible candidates is her father. She invites all three to her wedding, hoping to get resolution, but the upshot is all three agreeing to happily share the role of 'one-third of a father', Sophie and her fiancee deciding they are not ready to get married, and her mother spontaneously marrying one of the three possible fathers.

But this show is not about the plot, it is about the music, and there is plenty of it - too many familiar hits to select the handful of showstoppers, as everyone will have their personal favorites. The overture is an instrumental medley of the upcoming songs, and already many members of the audience will be singing under their breath, which they can continue all the way through to the finale, in which most productions encourage the audience to sing, dance and clap along to reprises of 'Mama Mia' and 'Dancing Queen'. The show finishes with 'Waterloo', the first song released by the band under the name ABBA, and a Eurovision winner, the song that brought them onto the world stage.

If, like me, you studied Latin in school and had trouble envisioning exactly what made Plautus so funny (struggling with its use of everyday language mixed with Greek words, not the classical Latin familiar from studying Caesar, Ovid and Virgil), this is the show for you! Bert Shevelove and Larry Gelbart based the book on elements from several Plautine comedies, and Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics keep things rolling along - although the only really memorable number is the prologue's 'Comedy Tonight', in which the slave Pseudolus (a name meaning false one) lets us know what we are in for:
"Something familiar, Something peculiar, Something for everyone, A comedy tonight!
Something appealing, Something appalling, Something for everyone, A comedy tonight!
Nothing with kings, nothing with crowns, Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns!
Old situations, New complications, Nothing portentous or polite
Tragedy tomorrow, Comedy tonight!"

As is to be expected in a farce, there is lots of action, with sex on offer but never quite achieved, mistaken identities galore, satirical portrayals of the patrician class, and a happy ending as Pseudolus gains his freedom (and the company of a beautiful courtesan) and his master Hero gets the girls he loves (Philia).

The show opened in Broadway in 1962 featuring Zero Mostel as Pseudolus, and won several Tony Awards, including Best Musical. A West End production in 1963 featured Frankie Howerd, while the 1966 film adaptation gave Zero Mostel another chance to strut his wisecracking slapstick stuff in the role.

Cervantes' 17th century Spanish classic 'Don Quixote' served as the inspiration for the story-within-the-story of Dale Wasserman's teleplay 'I, Don Quixote' which in turn was the basis for this 1965 musical, with music by Mitch Leigh, and lyrics by Joe Darion. While the frame story is inspired by events in the life of Miguel Cervantes, it is not intended to be historically accurate, any more than the internal story is a faithful version of the original novel.

Cervantes and his servant have been imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition, and he is forced to tell a story to save his possessions from being taken by fellow prisoners. After transforming himself and his servant into character ('Man of La Mancha (I, Don Quixote)') Cervantes proceeds to enact incidents of adventure, incorporating some of the prisoners along the way. They are interrupted several times as the guards drag people off for torture or execution, culminating in Cervantes himself being escorted away, to a reprise of 'The Impossible Dream' sung by the company.

The original Broadway production, which ran for six years, featured Richard Kiley as Don Quixote / Miguel Cervantes; he repeated the role in two revivals - 1972 and 1977. The first West End production featured Keith Michell. The 1972 film saw Peter O'Toole cast in the role, with singing provided by Simon Gilbert. There have been numerous touring companies and international productions, as well as a few more Broadway and West end revivals, and 'The Impossible Dream' has become a classic, recorded by almost anyone with claims to crooner status.