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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
The 1877 libretto calls it his coming of age; the party ends with the sighting of a flock of swans.
Q 02In the story, Odette is a princess turned into a swan by whom?
An evil sorcerer's curse
The 1994 animated film The Swan Princess borrowed exactly the same plot.
Q 03Where and when did Swan Lake receive its world premiere?
Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, 1877
The original choreographer was Julius Reisinger, and critics found his work "unimaginative and altogether unmemorable".
Q 04The 1895 Petipa–Ivanov revival on which most modern productions are based was first staged where?
The Mariinsky, St Petersburg
Petipa staged acts 1 and 3 and Ivanov the lakeside acts 2 and 4 for the Imperial Ballet in St Petersburg.
Q 05Which conductor and composer revised Tchaikovsky's score for the 1895 revival?
Riccardo Drigo
Tchaikovsky had died in November 1893, just as plans for the revival were coming together.
Q 06Which 1784 German tale, based on the swan-maiden myth, is often suggested as a source for the libretto?
The Stolen Veil by Johann Karl August Musäus
The resemblance is limited, and the true authorship of the libretto remains uncertain.
Q 07Which swan-associated real monarch has been suggested as a prototype for Prince Siegfried?
Ludwig II of Bavaria
Tchaikovsky's contemporaries noted his keen interest in the king's life; John Neumeier's production even ends with Ludwig's drowning.
Q 08How much was Tchaikovsky paid for the Swan Lake commission in May 1875?
800 rubles
Vladimir Begichev, director of the Moscow Imperial Theatres, commissioned it and gave him only a rudimentary outline of the dances.
Q 09Tchaikovsky reportedly first used the Swan Theme in an 1871 home ballet called what?
The Lake of the Swans
His brother Modest and niece Tatiana played Siegfried and Odette in it.
Q 10The Act 2 love duet in Swan Lake was fashioned from the final duet of which abandoned Tchaikovsky opera?
Undina
He also recycled material from The Voyevoda, dropped in 1868, for the fourth-scene entr'acte.
Q 11Which Delibes ballet made Tchaikovsky say he would not have written Swan Lake had he known its music?
Sylvia
He wrote to his protégé of its "charm, elegance, wealth of melody, rhythm and harmony", adding "I was ashamed".
Q 12Which ballerina danced Odette at the 1877 premiere, which was her benefit performance?
Pelageya Karpakova
Critics found her, a secondary soloist, "not particularly convincing".
Q 13Anna Sobeshchanskaya was originally cast as Odette in 1877 but was replaced. Why?
A governing official in Moscow complained about her
Q 21Rothbart is usually depicted as resembling which creature?
An owl
In the 1877 libretto a different villain stalked Odette in owl form.
Q 22What colour does Odile, Rothbart's daughter, usually wear?
Jet black
She appears only in Act 3, and in the 1895 production she did not actually wear black.
Q 23How can Odette's spell be broken?
One who has never loved before must swear to love her forever
Siegfried's oath to Odile in Act 3, thinking she is Odette, dooms the real swan queen.
She debuted seven weeks later and promptly had Petipa make her a new pas de deux, to Tchaikovsky's fury.
Q 14Critics of the 1877 premiere labelled Tchaikovsky's score "too noisy, too symphonic" and too what?
Wagnerian
The German origins of the story were treated with suspicion, and the characters' surnames were called unpronounceable.
Q 15How many performances did the poorly received original production manage between 1877 and 1883?
41
That was more than several other ballets in the Bolshoi repertoire, despite the bad reviews.
Q 16Who choreographed Tchaikovsky's rediscovered 1877 pas de deux as the Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux in 1960?
George Balanchine
The score turned up among orchestral parts for a Le Corsaire revival in the Bolshoi archives.
Q 17Ivanov's choreography for Act 2 was first seen at which event in February 1894?
Memorial concerts for Tchaikovsky
The small audience and the critics alike praised it, paving the way for the full revival.
Q 18Which Italian ballerina danced Odette/Odile in the 1895 revival, staged as her benefit?
Pierina Legnani
The ballet belonged solely to her until she left St Petersburg.
Q 19What feat, first performed publicly in 1893, was the Italian ballerina of the 1895 Swan Lake revival famous for?
32 consecutive fouettés
The whipped turns remain the ballet's most famous test of stamina for the Black Swan.
Q 20For the 1895 revival, the villain became the magician Rothbart instead of whom?
Odette's stepmother
Odette also changed from a fairy swan-maiden into a cursed mortal woman.
Q 24What are Siegfried and his friends carrying when they set off to hunt the swans?
Crossbows
He breaks his crossbow after Odette explains the spell, and sets about winning her trust.
Q 25What is the name of Prince Siegfried's friend who spots the flock of swans and suggests the hunt?
Benno
In an 1888 Prague staging the friends were renamed Jaroslav and Zdeňek, with Benno danced by a woman.
Q 26What does Siegfried's mother tell him he must do at the royal ball?
Choose a bride
Some productions parade the candidate princesses before the trick with Odile is sprung.
Q 27How many dancers perform the Dance of the Little Swans with arms crossed and hands linked?
Four
They move sideways doing sixteen pas de chat, imitating cygnets huddling together for protection.
Q 28What did Soviet-era productions at the Bolshoi and Mariinsky do to the ballet's tragic finale?
Replaced it with a happy one
Yury Grigorovich's Bolshoi version has been staged with both endings, defeating Rothbart in 1969 and letting him win in 2001.
Q 29Since the 1895 revival, has the same ballerina usually danced both Odette and Odile?
Yes, it is common practice
Dancing both roles became standard practice after 1895; some evidence suggests the 1877 original called for two different dancers.
Q 30Which company was the first in Europe outside Russia to stage a complete Swan Lake, in 1922?
The Finnish National Ballet
Until then only Russian and Czech companies had performed it, and only visiting Russians had brought it to Western Europe.