It’s a well-known fact that the single best way to be incredibly cool is to have an encyclopedic knowledge of opera. In other words, to be an opera buff. But what if you can’t devote the enormous amounts of time and energy needed to achieve this exulted status?
Imagine the following scenario. You are watching Jeopardy with your friends. One of the categories is ‘Opera.’ The first clue is, “This 1904 Puccini Opera Is Set In Nagasaki”. You reply “What is Madama Butterfly?”, and you are right. Your friends are impressed.
The next clue is, “Charles Gounod’s opera adaptation features this title character making a bargain with Mephistopheles.” You reply, “Who is Faust?”, and again you are right. Your friends are stunned.
A third clue says, “In the third act of this Verdi opera, Dr. Grenvil tells Violetta she doesn’t have long to live”. When you correctly reply, “What is La Traviata?”, you become a legend.
In your friends’ eyes, you stride the narrow world like a colossus. You are an opera buff (compared to them.) They don’t notice that you didn’t know the correct response to several of the other opera clues. No, all they remember is that they didn’t have the tiniest idea about any of the responses, and you knew some. It is enough. You have arrived at transcendent coolness.
How then, you ask, can I achieve even this relative buffness? That’s an easy one. Go to www.bzzwords.com. Click on Bzzwords University. Click on Trivia Training. Choose the “Opera” topic from the drop-down menu. Click on the Drill button. Keep answering questions until you get a lot of them right. Then go do something else and come back later to drill again, over and over until you stop forgetting. Don’t try to memorize. Just keeping guessing and eventually the right answers will be there.
That’s it. Soon, you will be able to answer enough trivia questions to convince opera ignoramuses, which is almost everyone, that you are a buff.
So what do you need to know about opera from a trivia training point of view? Know the most commonly performed operas, including La Traviata, Carmen, The Magic Flute, La Bohème, Tosca, The Barber of Seville, Aida, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Rigoletto, Hansel and Gretel, and Madama Butterfly.
Know that Verdi composed a ton of operas from 1839 to 1893. Puccini composed gobs between 1884 to 1926. If you don’t know the composer of an opera, one of those two guys is a good guess, and if you know the date of the premiere, you can usually narrow it down to which one.
Be able to identify the title of the opera from a plot summary. Know the composer of the opera, and the setting. Unlike Shakespeare plays, where you might be asked the name of any character, you only need to know the names of major characters, usually a protagonist and a love interest.
So that’s it. Go become a relative opera buff at Bzzwords University.
