Swan Lake Trivia
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50 free Swan Lake trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Swan Lake flopped at its Moscow premiere in 1877 and became the most famous ballet in the world after the 1895 St Petersburg revival, and this quiz covers the whole of that journey. It asks about Tchaikovsky's commission and the tunes he recycled, the swan-maiden legend behind the story, the disastrous first production and its critics, the Petipa and Ivanov revival that fixed the ballet's shape, the roles of Odette, Odile, Siegfried and the owl-like sorcerer Rothbart, the Dance of the Little Swans, the 32 fouettés, the Soviet happy endings, and the reinventions by Matthew Bourne, Graeme Murphy and Hollywood's Black Swan. Easy questions ask who composed it and what colour Odile wears; harder ones cover the ballerina who was sacked before the premiere, the fee Tchaikovsky received and which company first staged it complete outside Russia. It suits ballet-goers, music students, dancers, film fans and quiz nights that want a culture round with more than one right answer to argue about. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Swan Lake, its productions and its adaptations, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is Prince Siegfried celebrating with his tutor, friends and the peasants as Act 1 opens?
His birthday
His birthday, the day he comes of age. As the party winds down a flock of swans passes overhead and the young men set off to hunt them, which is how he finds the lake.
Q 02In Swan Lake, the spell lets Odette and her companions take human form only when?
At night
At night. By day they are swans, on a lake said to be made from the tears of Odette's mother, which is why Siegfried's hunting party meets her there by moonlight.
Q 03When Soviet television suddenly switched to Swan Lake in August 1991, what did viewers take it to mean?
A crisis at the top
A crisis at the top. The ballet ran on a loop as tanks rolled in during the 1991 coup against Gorbachev, and it has been shorthand for political upheaval in Russia ever since.
Q 04The 1895 Petipa–Ivanov revival of Swan Lake, the basis of most modern productions, was first staged where?
The Mariinsky, St Petersburg
The Mariinsky, St Petersburg. Moscow had dropped the ballet years earlier; here Petipa staged the court scenes and left the lakeside ones to Lev Ivanov, the company's second balletmaster.
Q 05Which conductor revised Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake score for the 1895 revival?
Riccardo Drigo
Riccardo Drigo also conducted the premiere. He slipped several of Tchaikovsky's piano pieces into the ballet in his own orchestrations, and it is his version, not the 1877 original, that most companies came to play.
Q 06In the 1994 animated film The Swan Princess, based on Swan Lake, what is Prince Siegfried renamed?
Derek
Derek. The film also trades the ballet's swan maidens for a puffin, a turtle and a frog, who befriend Odette while Rothbart holds her captive.
Q 07Which real monarch, who took the swan as his emblem, inspired John Neumeier's 1976 ballet Illusions, like Swan Lake?
Ludwig II of Bavaria
Ludwig II of Bavaria built Neuschwanstein as a castle for the swan knight Lohengrin. Declared insane and deposed in 1886, he died days later in mysterious circumstances in Lake Starnberg.
Q 08Which 2000 film ends with its grown-up hero taking the stage in Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake?
Billy Elliot
Billy Elliot. The grown-up Billy is danced by Adam Cooper, a star of the production's first cast, as his father and brother watch from the audience.
Q 09Tchaikovsky reportedly first used the Swan Theme in an 1871 home ballet called what?
The Lake of the Swans
The Lake of the Swans. He made it up for his sister's children during a summer stay on the family estate, and they remembered its main tune as the one the big ballet made famous.
Q 10The Act 2 love duet in Swan Lake was reworked from which destroyed Tchaikovsky opera about a water spirit?
Undina
Undina. Its closing duet for the water nymph and her knight became Odette and Siegfried's, with the two voices handed to a solo violin and cello.
Q 11Which Delibes work made Tchaikovsky say he would not have written Swan Lake had he known its music?
Sylvia
Sylvia. He heard it in Vienna some months after his own premiere and wrote that he was ashamed: beside its charm and wealth of melody, his own ballet seemed poor stuff.
Q 12In the original 1877 libretto of Swan Lake, how do Odette and Siegfried die?
They drown in a rising flood
They drown in a rising flood. Siegfried tears off the crown that protects Odette and hurls it into the lake; a storm breaks and the waters close over them both.
Q 13How did Tchaikovsky respond when an 1877 Odette added another composer's pas de deux to Swan Lake?
Q 21Rothbart is usually depicted as resembling which creature?
An owl
An owl. In the 1877 story a different villain stalked Odette in that shape; when the 1895 rewrite put Rothbart behind the spell, he inherited the wings.
Q 22In Swan Lake, who is Odile?
The sorcerer's daughter
The sorcerer's daughter, brought to the ball to trick the prince. She is known today as the Black Swan, yet in the 1895 staging that fixed the ballet's shape she did not wear black at all.
Q 23In Swan Lake, what can break the spell on Odette?
A vow of eternal love
A vow of eternal love, sworn by one who has never loved before. In the 1895 story killing Rothbart would not do it: when Siegfried moves to strike him, Odette intercedes, because his death would seal her fate.
Wrote music to fit her steps
Wrote music to fit her steps. Anna Sobeshchanskaya wanted to keep Petipa's choreography, so he matched the rival piece bar for bar, and she liked it enough to ask him for an extra variation.
Q 14Critics of Swan Lake's 1877 premiere called Tchaikovsky's score 'too noisy, too symphonic' and too what?
Wagnerian
Wagnerian was no compliment: ballet audiences expected light, tuneful music from house specialists, and critics judged his score far too complicated to dance to.
Q 15Swan Lake's first staging is called a flop, but what became of it?
Ran six years
Ran six years, all of them in Moscow. Joseph Hansen, the ballet master who twice restaged it there, then left for London's Alhambra Theatre and made a one-act ballet called The Swans.
Q 16Who turned a long-lost number from Swan Lake into the Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux in 1960?
George Balanchine
George Balanchine. The music had dropped out of the published score and lain forgotten until a copy turned up in Moscow in the 1950s; hearing of the find, he asked for and won permission to use it.
Q 17Ivanov's Act 2 of Swan Lake was first seen at which February 1894 event?
Memorial concerts for Tchaikovsky
Memorial concerts for Tchaikovsky, who had died the previous autumn just as plans to revive the ballet took shape, so he never saw the staging that most companies still follow.
Q 18Which Italian ballerina led the 1895 Swan Lake revival, staged as her benefit?
Pierina Legnani
Pierina Legnani kept the role to herself in St Petersburg until she went home in 1901, and her virtuoso technique spurred Russian dancers to develop the brilliance they are now known for.
Q 19The Italian ballerina who led the 1895 Swan Lake revival was famous for which feat of technique?
32 consecutive fouettés
32 consecutive fouettés, whipped turns on one leg. She had dazzled St Petersburg with them in Cinderella, and Petipa gave them to her again in the ballroom scene, where they have been a test for ballerinas ever since.
Q 20For the 1895 revival of Swan Lake, the villain became the magician Rothbart instead of whom?
Odette's stepmother
Odette's stepmother, a witch, was the one who hunted her in the 1877 story, while Rothbart simply turned up at the ball as a baron and showed himself a demon once the prince was tricked.
Q 24What are Siegfried and his friends carrying when they set off to hunt the swans?
Crossbows
Crossbows. Siegfried is taking aim at the leading swan when it turns into Odette, and he lays the weapon aside and promises not to harm her.
Q 25What is the name of Prince Siegfried's friend who spots the flock of swans and suggests the hunt?
Benno
Benno once did more than spot swans. In the 1895 staging he helped Siegfried partner Odette in the lakeside love duet, which became a dance for two only when a later prince chose to partner her alone.
Q 26What does Siegfried's mother tell him he must do at the royal ball?
Choose a bride
Choose a bride. At the ball six princesses are presented and he turns every one down, until an uninvited guest arrives with a young woman who looks exactly like Odette.
Q 27How many dancers perform the Dance of the Little Swans with arms crossed and hands linked?
Four
Four. They cross the stage as one linked line in exact unison, and only in the last bars do they break the chain and try to fly, before dropping to the ground.
Q 28What did the leading Soviet-era productions of Swan Lake do to its tragic finale?
Replaced it with a happy one
Replaced it with a happy one. Soviet taste called for an upbeat close, so Rothbart is beaten in a fight, the spell breaks and the lovers live happily ever after.
Q 29In which country is the story of Swan Lake set?
Germany
Germany, in the age of knights. The plot is thought to draw on German tales of swan maidens, and so a ballet written for Moscow ended up with a Prince Siegfried and a Baron von Rothbart.
Q 30Which Nordic company made a complete Swan Lake the first ballet it ever staged, in 1922?
The Finnish National Ballet
The Finnish National Ballet. The company was born with that Helsinki premiere, and in 1946 it carried the ballet on to Stockholm, the first time Sweden saw it complete.