Panis Angelicus Trivia Quiz

Answer: Coffee Cantata

Bach (1685-1750) was one of the most prolific Baroque composers. He is best known for his organ works (for example the Toccata and Fuga in D minor) and for his Brandenburg concerti. His "Kaffee Kantate" ("Coffee Cantata") introduces us to a dominant father and his daughter Lieschen, whose addiction to coffee irritates her father.

When the father puts her to the choice to give up coffee or never to marry, Lieschen tells her father she will obey him until she marries. But meanwhile she convinces her fiancé to indulge in coffee drinking too... As for the other options: these titles are purely invented. Champagne is mentioned in another classical composition, but I doubt if any classical composer has dedicated some time to write music on the theme of oysters. Tobacco doesn't occupy a prominent place in classical music either.

Answer: Cesar Franck

First of all, I want to explain the orthography of some of the names stated in the options. When playing in Flash mode style, you might notice that your computer encounters difficulties in rendering diacritic marks (accents, the cedilla, the umlaut or diaeresis, the hacek). So I've left all these marks out of the questions: only the interesting info section shows the correct orthography.
Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) was not a composer, but an author. He wrote poems, essays and theatre plays. Several of his plays were set to music by famous twentieth century composers. Let's mention only the best known: Claude Debussy's opera "Pelléas et Mélisande".
Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931) was a Belgian violinist, composer and music teacher. His "6 Sonatas for Solo Violin" were probably his masterwork. Besides his sonatas, he also composed some poems for violin and orchestra and completed one opera, "Piére li houyeû" in the Walloon language (a Belgian dialect of French).
André Grétry (1741-1813) was a Belgian composer of operas comiques (comic operas). Some titles: "Le Huron" based upon a play by Voltaire, "Zémire et Azor" and "Richard Coeur-de-Lion" ("Richard the Lionhearted").
"Panis Angelicus" is a composition by César Franck (1822-1890). César Franck was born in Liège, Belgium, and had Belgian nationality, but stayed most of his life in France. His works include the operas "Hulda" and "Ghiselle" (the latter not to be confused with the better known ballet by Adolphe Adam), the Symphony in D minor, the symphonic poem "Le chasseur maudit" ("The Doomed Hunter") and the motet "Panis Angelicus".
"Panis Angelicus" refers to the Transubstantiation in the Holy Eucharist (in the Roman-Catholic view), but has been recorded several times on CD's dedicated to Christmas Carols. The first verse of the lyrics can be translated as "The angelic bread becomes the bread of men".

Answer: Cavaleria Rusticana

"La Gazza Ladra" ("The Thieving Magpie") is one of the operas by Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868). Rossini (1792-1868) was a Romantic composer. He completed at least 56 works for musical theatre, including "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" ("The Barber of Seville") and "Guillaume Tell".
"I Quattro Stagione" ("The Four Seasons") is not an opera, but a series of violin concerti by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). These violin concerti are usually performed without any lyrics, but there exist four sonnets (perhaps written by Vivaldi himself) to accompany the music. Apart from 500 concerti and 90 sonatas, Vivaldi found also the time to compose 46 operas, of which I'll cite "Orlando Furioso" and "Il Tamerlano".
"I Pagliacci" is the masterpiece of Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1857-1919). He left us 11 operas and 7 operettas.
Mascagni (1863-1945) composed at least 18 works for musical theatre, but only his "Cavalleria Rusticana" makes part of the standard repertoire of operas that are frequently performed. The choir sings "Gli aranci olezzano" to sketch peaceful scenery in the beginning of the opera. Alas things turn bad soon afterward...

Answer: Jacques Offenbach

Eugène Scribe (1791-1861) was not a composer but a dramatist and librettist. He wrote the libretti for many operas, such as "I vespri Siciliani" by Giuseppe Verdi and "La muette de Portici" by Daniel Auber.
Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884) was a Czech composer. By the way, the letter 'r' in Bedrich should have a hacek (an inverted accent circumflexed), but I'm afraid the computer system will not render this properly. His masterpieces include the opera "The Bartered Bride" (the Czech title would upset my spelling checker) and the symphonic poem "Vltava" ("The River Moldau").
Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864) was a German (Prussian) composer, but the best known of his operas have a French libretto written by Eugène Scribe. Some of Meyerbeer's works are "Robert le Diable", "Les Huguenots", "Le Prophète" and "L'Africaine". He completed at least 16 operas in total.
The composer of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" is Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880). He specialised in operettas and opera buffa, but his final work is a bit more serious. Offenbach is best known for the French Can-can, which he included in the comic opera "Orphée aux Enfers" and from then on in various other compositions.
The opera "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" is based upon various tales by the German author Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822). Hoffmann composed some classical music too, for example the opera "Undine".

Answer: Carl Orff

Gershwin (1898-1937) was an American composer. The classical works with which he became world famous are the "Rhapsody in Blue" and the opera "Porgy and Bess".
Khatchaturian (1903-1978) was a Soviet-Russian composer, born in Georgia out of an Armenian family. His most familiar work is perhaps the "Sabre Dance", part of the ballet "Gayane". He also left us the ballet "Spartacus" and an "Ode in Memory of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin".
Francesco Cavalli is the pseudonym of Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni (1602-1678), one of the earliest opera composers. Some titles of his operas: "Il Giasone" ("Jason"), "Le Nozze di Teti e di Peleo" ("The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis", who were Achilles' parents) and "Ercole Amante" ("Hercules in Love").
The "Carmina Burana" is a cantata composed by Carl Orff (1895-1982). This German composer and music teacher left us at least 20 works for musical theatre, of which the "Carmina Burana" (and especially its movement "O Fortuna") is the most famous. The "Carmina Burana" is based upon a set of poems written in the monastery of Benediktbeuren (Germany) in the Thirteenth Century, in a mixture of Latin, medieval German and old Provençal.
In the fragment "In Taberna" the choir members think of all sorts of reasons to drink for: for the prisoners, for the vain sisters, for the soldiers in the woods, for the scattered monks. And everyone joins to drink: the soldier, the clergyman, brother and sister, mother and donkey... All in all, it is quite a merry event.

Answer: The Love for Three Oranges

Prokofiev (1891-1953) was a Russian composer. He completed at least 14 operas, nine ballets (including "Cinderella"), music for four theatre shows and for at least eight movies, and of course the piece "Peter and the Wolf".
The opera "Lyubov k Tryom Apelsinam" has been performed in French, German, Russian and Slovenian. The title can be translated into English as "The Love for Three Oranges". It tells a fairy tale about a hypochondriac prince who doesn't laugh at anything, and is cursed by a witch to be obsessed with three oranges. However, the orange he finally peels contains a princess whom he will marry at the end.
By the way, the other options are pure figments of my imagination. No classical composer has ever tried his hand with any of these fake titles.

Answer: Franz Schubert

Chopin (1810-1849) was not an Austrian, but a Polish composer. He worked most of his life in France. He specialised in compositions for the piano, mostly as a solo instrument. One of his masterpieces is the "Piano Sonata Nr. 2 in B-flat minor", including the "Funeral March".
Mozart (1756-1791) was a prolific Austrian composer. Among his principal works there are at least 68 symphonies, 27 piano concerti, 23 string quartets, 18 masses and 23 operas.
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was another Austrian composer. He is best known for his ten symphonies (of which one was not completed).
The "Trout Quintet" for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass was composed by Franz Schubert (1797-1828). Other famous of his about one thousand compositions include ten symphonies, 19 works for musical theatre, six masses and 700 songs.

Answer: Johann Strauss

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) was one of the first opera composers. Nine of his 23 operas still exist. His best known extant works are "L'Orfeo" completed in 1607 and "Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria" ("The Return of Odysseus to His Country"), first performed in 1640.
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) was a Norwegian composer. He is best remembered for the "Peer Gynt" suites (including the famous "Morgendstimmung").
Georges Bizet (1838-1875) was a French composer. He left us at least three operettas and ten operas, of which the most famous are "Les pêcheurs de perles" and "Carmen".
The "Champagne Polka" was a composition by Johann Baptist Strauss (1825-1899), the most famous of the Strauss family. Strauss composed 18 operettas (among which "Die Fledermaus" is most prominent), at least 76 waltzes (including "The Blue Danube" and "The Emperor Waltz"), 36 polkas (of which the "Tritsch-Tratsch Polka" is probably the best known) and 41 marches.

Answer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

All these were Russian composers. Let's briefly discuss their oeuvre.
Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was one of "The Five": Russian composers who met in Saint-Petersburg. The others were César Cui, Mily Balakirev, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin.
Mussorgsky left us seven operas, of which "Boris Godunov" is perhaps the most famous. He also composed the orchestral work "Night on Bald Mountain" and the piano suite "Pictures at an Exhibition".
Shostakovich (1906-1975) was a Russian composer. His operas include "The Nose" and "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". Besides half a dozen operas and some ballet suites, he composed 16 symphonies, 15 string quartets and various chamber pieces.
Stravinsky (1882-1971) shocked the ballet world with his "L'oiseau de feu" ("The Firebird") and especially his "Le sacre du printemps" ("The Rite of Spring"). He completed at least eight operas, 12 ballet suites, and various other compositions.
Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was a prolific Russian composer. He left us at least eight operas, six symphonies and three ballets, as well as piano concerti and orchestral works. His masterpieces are the operas "Eugene Onegin" and "Queen of Spades", the First Piano Concerto, the "Overture 1812", and the ballets "Sleeping Beauty", "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker".
The "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" is one of the scenes out of the ballet "The Nutcracker". This ballet was based upon a story written by E.T.A. Hoffmann. It tells the adventure of a little girl receiving a nutcracker in the form of a soldier, and then experiencing how this toy comes to life.

Answer: Giuseppe Verdi

Verdi (1813-1901) completed 27 operas. He is very famous for his opera chorals, for example: "Va Pensiero" (Nabucco). From 1851 to 1853 he composed three of his best known operas: "Rigoletto", "Il Trovatore" and "La Traviata".
The drinking song "Libiamo" goes as follows (I'll only quote the English translation of the first verse): "Let us drink out of this merry chalice". It is a duet sung by Violetta, a French courtesan, and her love interest Alfredo, with the choir insisting on emptying the chalice so that the lovers can unite.