Lately I’ve been preoccupied with Verdi and Il trovatore in particular anticipating the opera’s return to the Met later this month for the first time since 2018, this unusual deep-dive Chris’s Cache (on my birthday) is the result.
Some answers to the Rosenkavalier Trio Vocal ID quiz for you!
I’ve got some new software and messing around with it today I had the insane notion that a vocal ID quiz featuring the Rosenkavalier trio might be fun.
The long-awaited solution to the Fiordiligi Quiz!
I am embarrassingly bad at vocal ID quizzes—I may never get over the one where I was convinced every single excerpt was Leontyne Price—but I do love to put them together.
A new series where we pit Zerbinetta against Zerlina, Caballé against Callas, Berg against Bellini in the ultimate operatic showdown.
Congratulations to kankedort who correctly identified 17 of 24 selections!
The competition to guess the identities of 24 sopranos singing “O hehrstes Wunder!” ends tonight, Monday May 11 at midnight EDT.
The final third of this week’s vocal-identification quiz brings together perhaps the most difficult-to-name sopranos offering Sieglinde’s “O hehrstes Wunder!” from Die Walküre.
Today’s installment of parterre box’s latest vocal-identification quiz brings eight more Sieglindes proclaiming “O hehrstes Wunder!”
For an ecstatic outburst lasting less than a minute I swiftly gathered up an exaltation of Sieglindes from live performances spanning nearly 80 years. In fact, there were so many I decided to split up the quiz into three parts.
It seems to me that we have a tie!
When La Cieca reached out asking for content, I resurrected a hoary standby—the vocal ID quiz.
Congratulations to Christian Ocier (not pictured) who guessed all 16 of our mystery Salomes correctly!
A challenging Salome-themed vocal identification quiz arranged by Our Own Christopher Corwin.
At long last, cher public, a finale to our Senta’s Ballad quiz, nearly a month late! The name of the winner and the complete lists of sopranos after the jump.
After the jump, a quiz featuring 15 singers performing Senta’s Ballad.
La Cieca admits she was surprised the historically well-informed cher public missed the mark so frequently on the “Breadbox” quiz.
The Manon Lescaut identification quiz, which La Cieca thought would be pretty much a cakewalk, turned out vastly more challenging than she imagined.
Our Own Chris Corwin (not pictured) has taken a peek at the current guesses for the “Sola perduta” quiz and notes that fewer than half of the selections offered have been correctly identified.
La Cieca hopes the cher public won’t let poor Manon Lescaut get too lonely out there in the bayou or the heath or whatever it is, because you’ll want stay close to listen to our latest Identification Quiz, 15 sopranos in full hysterical wail.
Congratulations to Leitbreite, whose cunning ears identified all but one of the singers in last week’s “Orpheus” quiz.
In honor of the upcoming Met Opening Night, here’s a singer identification quiz featuring, for a change, music for a tenor: the climactic phrase from Otello’s third act monologue.
Your task: name the Ortruds, all unlucky 13 of them.
Tell us: What was the best of 2025?
Parterre Box concludes the thrilling first year of Talk of the Town by inviting your lightning rod opinions on several more categories of operatic argumentation.
