Name the English soprano who sang Alceste at La Scala six weeks after giving birth to her first child.

Your answer:
Rosalind Plowright
Lesley Garrett
Felicity Lott
Emma Kirkby

Name the American operamom who commissioned the song cycle "Paper Wings", set to four short poems she wrote for one of her two daughters.

Your answer:
Marilyn Horne
Frederica von Stade
Dolora Zajick
Denyce Graves

Name the versatile American soprano who was quoted as saying, "I don't stay away from my children longer than two or three weeks at a time". The children, a daughter and a son, stay with their father, musicologist Michael Nott, and visit her on tour. (Hint: She recently premiered a new opera based on a "Great" American novel.)

Your answer:
Debra Skeen
Stephanie Sundine
Dawn Upshaw
Susan Dunn

Name the Bulgarian soprano - a "Karajan singer" - who said, "I was born for my profession, I felt compelled to follow my calling, and a singing career isn't ideally suited to family life. But I wouldn't be without my one daughter, without the wonderful experience of having a child."

Your answer:
Anna Tomowa-Sintow
Stefka Evstatieva
Gena Dimitrova
Vesselina Vassileva

Name the Brooklyn-born soprano who said, "I have three step-children, and two children of our own. Our two children, between them, have five birth defects. So, this was not a question of Mama going off to Vienna for three days to sing and leaving a nice nanny in charge of two little kids who were going off to a fancy private school. The solution was to take them all with me. I sang in Europe only during the children's summer vacations. I never sang in Europe when all the children were not with me. Which meant nannies and Grandma. Grandma traveled with us and was the Rock of Gibraltar."

Your answer:
Evelyn Lear
Arleen Auger
Geraldine Farrar
Beverly Sills

Who is the soprano that sang Desdemona at the Met in 1995, within five weeks of having her second child? She took two lessons a week before the baby was born, and started again at one week postpartum. She said, "I don't even know how I did it. Just determination I think."

Your answer:
Jessye Norman
Cheryl Studer
Eleanor Steber
Renée Fleming

Name the Korean soprano who lives on Long Island with her husband, two teen-age daughters and 6-year-old son. She has remarked, "Singers love to talk about the voice, how to produce it, how to support it, how to breathe. That bores me. I want to talk about the person. What kind of life they had, how many children, what they love . . . I love to sing. I was born to sing. It's the career I've chosen. My concern is my family and my singing."

Your answer:
Sumi Jo
Hei-Kyung Hong
Su-Jin Lee
Youngok Shin

Name the American dramatic soprano whose marriage to a Philidelphia minister was followed by the birth of their three children (including a set of twins.) "My husband is my support shelf. He says the thing he fell in love with first was my voice, and I came along for the ride! He's extremely musical. He believed so deeply that God wanted me to sing, that he made me believe this was really going to happen."

Your answer:
Alessandra Marc
Michèle Crider
Sharon Sweet
Angela Brown

Name the American mezzo-soprano, best known for her lyric travesti roles, who said, "[In 1989] I had my son, Benjamin, and he was four months old when I got to rehearsals for the Met, so I was a bit overweight and breast-feeding and feeling not very man-like. I had a lot of major debuts, and all I thought about was getting through it and being a good mom. In a way, that took the nerves away. My brain was always somewhere else." (HINT: She is a graduate of HGO's Opera Studio).

Your answer:
Suzanne Mentzer
Tatiana Troyanos
Susan Graham
Jennifer Larmore

Name the French operamom who in 1998, sang Olympia in La Scala's Les Contes d'Hoffmann in an advanced stage of pregnancy, and managed to pop out a high G at the end of her aria. Of the role, she said, ". . . at La Scala, I was pregnant, so Olympia was too. She did a striptease, and then demolished everything she touched."

Your answer:
Lily Pons
Mado Robin
Marie Devellereau
Natalie Dessay

Name the renowned Catalan-born soprano who said, "I have found in my family a support many singers lack - which is why they don't feel as confident as I do. Confidence has nothing to do with prestige, money, success or fame and everything to do with human relationships." This mother of two, who never allowed her personal life to assume second place in her life, turned down a 10-year contract from the Met in 1971, because it would have meant uprooting her entire family.

Your answer:
María Bayo
Montserrat Caballe
Ainhoa Arteta
Victoria de los Angeles

This question is a bit different. Name the Hollywood star whose mother was an operasinger in Germany. She spent her first twelve years either on the road with her mother, or in the small town of Nuremberg with her aunt and grandmother. When her mother toured Europe, she was a self-proclaimed "gypsy child in the back singing". (HINT: Her first blockbuster success gave her a "speedy" rise to fame.)

Your answer:
Catherine Zeta Jones
Sandra Bullock
Julia Roberts
Meg Ryan

Name the Italian operamom who traveled from La Scala every night to her home in Modena, in order to eat breakfast with her daughter.

Your answer:
Maria Luigia Borsi
Mirella Freni
Renata Tebaldi
Antonietta Stella

Name the American soprano who made the following comment about singing: "It's never been my whole life. My family has been more important to me and always will be. I don't want to picture myself someday sitting in my studio with all these pictures (saying), 'When I did Violetta' -- after 10 facelifts with my toy poodle on my lap, telling some young student how wonderful I was. I would hate that. Growing old gracefully is the most beautiful thing one can do. Accept your age. I don't think you necessarily have to look it. But just live life to the fullest whatever age you are." (HINT: This singer is one of three in a well-known operatic ensemble.)

Your answer:
Cynthia Lawrence
Kathleen Cassello
Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet
Kallen Esperian

Name the Salzburg-born mezzo-soprano whose young son, Felix, bears the middle name of "Octavian". (HINT: She studied piano at the Mozarteum in Austria.)

Your answer:
Brigitte Fassbaender
Angelika Kirchschlager
Marianne Brandt
Astrid Monika Hofer

Name the British dramatic soprano with a career spanning more than 30 years, who said, "Being a mother has been a crucial experience for me, both as a woman and as an artist: because you have to know the feelings you are portraying on stage. It helps make your interpretations richer if you've lived and have personal knowledge of those emotions."

Your answer:
Kathleen Ferrier
Eva Turner
Gwyneth Jones
Josephine Barstow

Name the American soprano who gave birth to her first child four months before her Covent Garden debut in "Elektra" with Sir Georg Solti. She said, "I never felt better, even though Eva Marton kept laughing because she insisted that I smelled like milk."

Your answer:
Susan B. Anthony
Susan Neves
Nadine Secunde
Rebecca Copley

Name the Swedish soprano, most noted for her Janacek recordings in the 1970's with Sir Charles Mackerras, who is quoted as saying: "I sang Musetta with her [Tebaldi's] Mimì at the old Met, with no rehearsals! I was pregnant and wanted to drop out, but Mr. Bing wouldn't let me. So I covered myself with boas to hide my pregnancy. When I made my entrance, screeching onstage in Act II, Tebaldi took one look at me and said, 'Mamma mia!'" (HINT: From 1991 until 1996 she was the director of the Drottingholm Opera Festival and also worked successfully as a stage director.)

Your answer:
Birgit Nilsson
Sigrid Arnoldson
Elisabeth Söderström
Lena Nordin

Name the Hungarian dramatic soprano, who took on her doctor-husband's last name, who is quoted as saying: "I'm lucky to have a husband who takes a great interest in my work and career and two beautiful children who have always traveled with me as much as possible, and seen places I only knew from books at their age." (HINT: The role of Turandot turned her into a star.)

Your answer:
Eva Marton
Sylvia Sass
Andrea Rost
Maria Nemeth

Name the Spanish mezzo-soprano who stressed that singers should not sacrifice everything because this will not only make for a very sad and empty life after retirement, but will also make their singing arid, and bereft of the juice, the mellowness, that comes from living life to the full. She is deeply happy to have had her children while still young because this helped her strike the right balance between her public and private life.(HINT: She is well known for her Carmen and Rosina, and she was the first female opera and lyrical singer nominated as a member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Arts.)

Your answer:
Maria Malibran
Conchita Supervia
Teresa Berganza
Maria Gay

Name the coloratura soprano who sang through much of her pregnancy because her costumes were conveniently concealing, like that for Micaela in Carmen, which ''hung from below the bust line to the floor over a large hooped underskirt.'' Within three years after her son's birth, she was an international sensation, and made her Met debut at the age of 35, singing Lucia.

Your answer:
Joan Sutherland
Gail Robinson
Roberta Peters
Anna Moffo

Name the Italian soprano born in the fishing town of Savona, who said,"Do I think of myself as a diva? Even after being anointed with a mink for a Blackglama poster, I still had to wash my children's clothes, clean my house, go to the supermarket and pick out the best vegetables. A diva would not drive her own car, or scream at the children when they misbehave, or take care of her family. I don't fool around with singing when I am at home, I have too much to do. It might be easy to play at being a diva, but that's not for me." Well known for her Verdi and Puccini, she became a resident Diva at the Met in 1974, where for many years she appeared almost every season.

Your answer:
Renata Tebaldi
Antonietta Stella
Maria Chiara
Renata Scotto

Name the Slavakia-born coloratura soprano who raised her two daughters alone following the untimely death of her husband, who said that "every singer who has children will know what I mean when I say that wherever one is, no matter what one is doing on stage, one's mind is always at home with the children wondering what they're doing, whether they are all right and why am I here and not with them? They need me and I need them." She is most known for her portrayals of Queen of the Night and Zerbinetta.

Your answer:
Eva Urbanova
Edita Gruberova
Emmy Destinn
Milada Subrtova

Name the American soprano who told the following tale about her Met debut: "My husband and two kids came and sat in a box and they were thrilled. But Alceste has a lot of dancing. After one, this balletomane sitting behind them let loose with a boo. My daughter turned and said, 'If you boo my mommy, I'll slap your face!' She was seven. I raised her right."

Your answer:
Ellen Faull
Lorna Haywood
Diana Soviero
Eileen Farrell

Who is the Italian soprano who said the following: "My daughter has traveled with me since she was ten days old. . . I do my job, which is important for me, which is my happiness -- along with my baby, of course. But when I go out of the theater, I am myself. That's all. I am not a diva. This is my way."

Your answer:
Barbara Frittoli
Miriam Gauci
Maria Luigia Borsi
Nuccia Foccile

Who is the Russian mezzo who sang in Boris Godunov at the Met while seven months pregnant, and was described as "still a dangerously seductive Marina"? Twelve years earlier, she sang the title role of Carmen - also pregnant. This singer is quoted as saying, "The moment I walk onstage, I feel this something, this force coming to me from somewhere above; and suddenly I exude so much energy that it's enough for each of the 2,000 or so people out there." (Hint: This singer often sings a character in "Eugene Onegin", with whom she shares a name.)

Your answer:
Olga Rezaeva
Olga Savova
Olga Borodina
Olga Korzhenskaya

Born near Prague, can you name the contralto who debuted at 17 years of age as Azucena? Abandoned by her husband when she was pregnant with her fourth child, she went on to become the leading contralto in Hamburg for 14 years. The Met engaged her just after she married her second husband, and her new life in America brought three more children. For the next 30+ years she performed a wide variety of repertoire on the stage and concert platform, including musicals, radio work, and film. Her last appearance at the Met was as Erda in Siegfried. She died in 1936 from leukemia. Who was this remarkable operamom?

Your answer:
Teresa Kubiak
Ewa Podles
Ernestine Schumann-Heink
Maria Müller

This Canadian singer regularly gave 120 performances a year, while raising five children. Who is she?

Your answer:
Maureen Forrester
Teresa Stratas
Emma Albani
Judith Forst

What New Zealand-born soprano was quoted as saying, "I feel lucky because I know I am one of the few singers to combine a completely satisfying working life with a happy home life. But it means having no social life at all just a very few close friends. I only have so much energy, so something had to go. This is why, at the end of the day, I've preserved my sanity for the children and also manage to do my best at work."

Your answer:
Rosina Buckman
Kiri Te Kanawa
Marie-Adele McArthur
Malvina Major

Name the unconventional Oldenburg-born soprano, known for her highly individual and dramatic Wagner interpretations, who raised two children. She is quoted as saying "Thank God I have my family and wonderful friends and a lot of colleagues I respect. This is my greatest luxury. Singing is the most wonderful experience imaginable and I wouldn't want to change my life with anybody's."

Your answer:
Leonie Rysanek
Kirsten Flagstad
Hildegard Behrens
Astrid Varney

Name the Lancashire-born soprano, who is married to vocal coach David Gowland, and has two young sons. Adamant that she's not going to be sucked into "the airport-to-airport superstar thing, she insists that they take first place in her life. "Fortunately, my agent, Jonathan Groves, is also a family man who understands that." (HINT: This singer survived a strongly-criticized rapid ascent to stardom ten years ago.)

Your answer:
Amanda Roocroft
Felicity Palmer
Rosamund Illing
Jane Eaglen

Name the New York-born soprano who credits giving birth to her daughter Daphne as her "greatest achievement", adding that "she has enabled me to go even beyond my wildest imaginings." Known worldwide for her Cio-Cio San and Salome, this singer was not only turned down by Juilliard, but told that she could forget about ever having a career as a singer! A career spanning three decades has proven otherwise.

Your answer:
Reri Grist
Shirley Verrett
Martina Arroyo
Catherine Malfitano

Name the American soprano, and mother of four, who sang Sophie in a Metropolitan Opera production of Der Rosenkavalier three weeks after she gave birth to her first child at the age of 29. (HINT: She commissioned a song by Marc Neikrug in celebration of the birth of her son in 1995.)

Your answer:
Ruth Ann Swenson
Heidi Grant Murphy
Kathleen Battle
Barbara Bonney

Who is the American-born operamom who is as well-known for her humanitarian work as she is her operatic achievements? A self-described "proud mother of a teenage son and daughter", she has appeared in film productions as Mimi in La bohème, and Anne Truelove in The Rake's Progress. She has been acclaimed as one of the leading and most active recitalists of her generation and in addition to her vast repertoire of German Lieder, she is also known as a leading interpreter and staunch promoter of French, American and Scandanavian music. Now a Swedish citizen, she has lived in Europe since 1977. In 1998 she founded a self-named Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation to personalize her struggle for the prevention of conflicts in the world and to facilitate reconciliation and enduring peace where conflicts have already occurred.

Your answer:
June Anderson
Harolyn Blackwell
Barbara Hendricks
Carol Vaness

Name the Oklahoma-born operamom, the tenth of fifteen children, who said, "A whole lot of singers make their mistake--they put their whole lives into just career. Well, I think as an individual and from my background I have so much to do. And if I ever retire I don't think I'll keep coming back, because I find such fulfillment in relationships, real relationships with people, and in life itself." Recently inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, this African-American soprano resides in New York City and Houston, TX.

Your answer:
Jessye Norman
Leona Mitchell
Leontyne Price
Grace Bumbry