Q 01/05

What is Prince Siegfried celebrating with his tutor, friends and the peasants as Act 1 opens?

A) His birthday

B) His wedding

C) His coronation

D) His return from war

Answer · why

A) 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 h...

Q 02/05

In Swan Lake, the spell lets Odette and her companions take human form only when?

A) At midday

B) In winter

C) At night

D) During storms

Answer · why

C) 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 b...

Q 03/05

When Soviet television suddenly switched to Swan Lake in August 1991, what did viewers take it to mean?

A) A broadcast fault

B) A crisis at the top

C) A nuclear accident

D) The outbreak of war

Answer · why

B) 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 uphea...

Q 04/05

The 1895 Petipa–Ivanov revival of Swan Lake, the basis of most modern productions, was first staged where?

A) The Mariinsky, St Petersburg

B) The Bolshoi, Moscow

C) The Alexandrinsky, St Petersburg

D) The Hermitage, St Petersburg

Answer · why

A) 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 Ivano...

Q 05/05

Which conductor revised Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake score for the 1895 revival?

A) Ludwig Minkus

B) Cesare Pugni

C) Riccardo Drigo

D) Léo Delibes

Answer · why

C) 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 ...