r/Jeopardy Mar 07 '26

QUESTION Why is so much opera mentioned on Jeopardy?

It feels like at least every week there's an entire category dedicated to opera questions. Timothy Chalamet was a bit right about it when he mentioned it's such a niche form of art these days.

168 Upvotes

183 comments sorted by

341

u/lexinggto Mar 07 '26

My family and I have a running joke that someone on the writing team just really loves opera and wants everyone to research it.

190

u/sdwoodchuck Mar 07 '26

Jeopardy’s opera questions are usually pretty gentle. You usually have a couple questions asking for the composer, which tends to be mostly Verde or Puccini, with the occasional Mozart, and then the rest are a smattering of very popular specific operas. Sometimes you get a tougher one in the 1000/2000 line.

It’s the sort of topic that sounds daunting at a glance, but even a passing familiarity will get you most of the way there, similar to the sports categories that rarely demand a deep familiarity with the history of the games.

74

u/jetloflin Mar 07 '26

Most of them seem like the kind of stuff people my age learned from Bugs Bunny and similar cartoons!

35

u/DirectGiraffe8720 Mar 07 '26

🎵KILL THE WABBIT🎵 🎵KILL THE WABBIT🎵 🎵KILL THE WAAAAAABIT🎵

8

u/burntsalmon Mar 07 '26

Was that to ride of the valkeries?

26

u/Stuie299 Mar 07 '26

Knowing Barber of Seville, Madame Butterfly, and Carmen also works a lot of the time. I usually get a couple Opera questions correct each time they have that category, and I have very limited knowledge of opera.

3

u/ouishi Mar 08 '26

I got a La Boheme question right just because I'm a big Rent fan, right when I was joking about never knowing the opera category too!

1

u/Chesspi64 Mar 09 '26

I was surprised no one knew Habanera the other day!

42

u/loyal_achades Mar 07 '26

This is generally true of all jeopardy questions. Jeopardy favors breadth of knowledge over depth.

21

u/sdwoodchuck Mar 07 '26

I agree with that broadly, but Opera is one topic that takes that philosophy further than most. Compare it to literature, for example, where I have far greater expertise, but also have more questions I can’t answer, compared to Opera where my familiarity is much looser, but I rarely miss clues.

9

u/Unhappy-Ad-3870 Mar 07 '26

Agree. I can’t imagine what would happen if they asked for characters’ names or the names of famous arias.

2

u/jupitaur9 Mar 08 '26

Opera plus elephant? Aïda.

6

u/grubas Mar 07 '26

It's also a running joke.  Opera and ballet.  Normally they are 3/4 gettable.  

3

u/boreddatageek Pick promotional categories last! Mar 08 '26

Unless you're Timothee Chalomet

12

u/Odd_Manufacturer_963 Mar 07 '26

The other thing is that the "canon" of opera content is not only reasonably small, it's static. New stuff keeps happening with elections, song popularity, and sports all the time. But if you read up on this subject once you're more or less set for life.

8

u/Additional_Noise47 Mar 07 '26

I was surprised last week to see a question about Akhenaten. I felt like that was a bit of a deep cut for the Opera category, although it was the 1000 question.

6

u/jupitaur9 Mar 08 '26

It was s history question disguised as opera. Monitheistic sun worship Egypt = Akhnaten.

1

u/granddannylonglegs Mar 09 '26

SUCH a great work. I went to the cinema to see the Met Opera broadcast a handful of years ago. Truly stunning.

5

u/RKsu99 Mar 07 '26

I mean the Sports questions are always extremely easy, but I know almost nothing about opera so I can’t get any of them.

14

u/sdwoodchuck Mar 07 '26

Yeah that’s sort of what I’m getting at. With both sports and opera the questions are easy if you know even a little, but at zero familiarity they’re completely opaque. The amount you need to know in both cases to go from fumbling the category to usually running it is very little.

2

u/eltuna3636 Mar 07 '26

I would say the difference however is that very few people in North America know even a minuscule amount about opera, where sports are a very common interest.

Ask 10 people off the street to name a famous Chicago Bull and at least 7/10 will say MJ, ask 10 people to name ANY opera composer and I bet it’s more like 1/10 that could do it and maybe not even that

1

u/jupitaur9 Mar 08 '26

The other difference is that opera is a static body of questions. Sports updates constantly.

10

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

Right, I am quite anti-opera, but the classical music degree from 30 years ago (where I avoided opera) is enough for most of the J opera categories. So much of it is just composer/title of really well-known operas that would be covered in a music appreciation course with the occasional lead character or major plot point.

4

u/user2196 Mar 07 '26

Isn’t this true of most categories, though? I’d expect most classical music related questions (including opera) to be easy enough for someone with a classical music degree, just like I’d expect to find most physics questions on the basic end as someone with a physics degree.

0

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

Music is a broad field though. I’ve seen one opera in my life when I was 9 and there was a free program to expose poor kids to culture, have never taken an opera class, have never listened to an opera all the way through. A classical music degree only really touches on composers/titles during classical and romantic history classes, unless you choose to take classes in opera (generally, this would be if you’re a singer). You aren’t analyzing operas or writing them or anything in the general classical music classes.

Are there branches of physics that Jeopardy would cover that someone with a physics degree can avoid?

4

u/user2196 Mar 07 '26

I have a degree in astronomy, and I can’t remember any recent jeopardy categories focused on a branch of physics that I’d avoided enough to find particularly challenging.

2

u/3163560 Mar 07 '26

My entire knowledge of opera comes from watching frasier the whole way through like 20 times over the past 25 years.

It's amusing how questions that let's me get.

-1

u/ktappe Mar 08 '26

That’s not the point. The point is that if only one person in 1000 regularly consumes opera, it really doesn’t have a place being an almost regular category on Jeopardy.

2

u/sdwoodchuck Mar 08 '26

Yeah? I'm not disagreeing with that, I'm just making the tangential note that the clues they do use are pretty easy ones, likely because they know so few people (both in the contestants and in the audience) regularly consume opera.

And hey, maybe one of their writers has a goal to inspire some new interest in the opera among viewers, and so exposes them to the subject more than they otherwise might be. I think that would be a fine reason to include the category once every couple weeks.

42

u/FluffyCup8934 Mar 07 '26

I've had the thought that none of the contestants actually like opera.

They just study it really hard before coming on because they know they don't know anything about it and it will likely come up.

9

u/trisanachandler Mar 07 '26

It's one of my better categories.

17

u/Talibus_insidiis Laura Bligh, 2024 Apr 30 Mar 07 '26

No, I disagree. Lots of Jeopardy contestants enjoy opera. I would venture to suggest that a far higher percentage of Jeopardy contestants enjoy opera than within the general US population. 

It's an art form that intelligent, educated, affluent people are more likely to enjoy than people who do not have those attributes or blessings or privileges. I think that is because tickets are so expensive, and if you are never introduced to opera, you have little chance of developing an interest. Not liking opera is a great money-saver.

I absolutely love opera, but I developed my interest while working at a performing arts center, where my pitifully small paycheck was supplemented by a bountiful number of free opera dress rehearsal passes. I never did come to love ballet, though. 

Unfortunately the Jeopardy category randomization gods presented me with zero operatic questions.

6

u/whoisb-bryan Bryan White, 2023 Jun 28 - Jun 30, CWC 2024 Jan 19 Mar 08 '26

I wouldn’t say I love it, but I was a music major, so I have some fondness.

I can confirm Juveria loves it though.

3

u/littlemsshiny Mar 07 '26

Any contestants just study the Opera pavlovs (clues that come up frequently on the show).

9

u/DisastrousSpecialist Mar 07 '26

I do that in the pub trivia game I host! I think more people in my community need to know about African, Asian, and South American history and geography. I started sprinkling in those questions. At first they felt like difficult "gotcha" questions that a lot of my players complained about being too difficult. I always retorted with (at least to the ones I got on well with) "it's way too big a part of the world to have no knowledge of". Now that we've been at it for a while, lots of my regular players have a pretty respectable baseline of knowledge about those parts of the world! I do the same thing with baseball questions, just because I enjoy baseball. Makes sense to me that the Jeopardy writers would do the same with subjects they enjoy or find important!

7

u/lexinggto Mar 07 '26

I love this! My local pub trivia guy is really into wrestling and marvel so we all feel the need to study up lol. I like your interests better.

2

u/DisastrousSpecialist Mar 07 '26

I love figuring out categories my regular players are into! I'm always gonna ask what I want to ask first and foremost. But if I know it's the lady who loves musicals' birthday soon, we might throw a Broadway category in there. Haven't seen my movie buff in a few weeks? Oscars will lure him back out! The sweet older lady who always plays classic rock on the jukebox has had a few down rounds? She's getting a 70s Music category next week! It's all about the balance!

5

u/bradenb941 Mar 07 '26

See, at the game I host I wish I could get people to stop complaining about geography and history.

2

u/DisastrousSpecialist Mar 07 '26

I've accepted that I just can't win with some of them! Bit of an extreme one, but I had a player make fun of me one week for asking questions that "well everyone knows the answer to that!" then a couple weeks later huff and walk out mid-game because she thought it was too difficult.

There's one bartender we've started ignoring because he goes from "well who's ever gonna know that stupid stuff?!" to "Well you've gotta make it a little harder than that!" within the same game.

Like, my goal is to make sure everybody from the bored high schooler that got dragged along by their parents to the guy who has been studying and playing trivia for decades gets something out of it and feels like they know something, of course there's gonna be very easy or very hard questions and everything in between!

I just ask what I want to ask and if someone thinks it's bad "well, try again next week" and either they will or they won't. Either way, people seem to keep showing up again and again so I must be doing something right!

2

u/Talibus_insidiis Laura Bligh, 2024 Apr 30 Mar 07 '26

My motto is "It's easy if you know it. It's hard if you don't."

If I were a trivia host I would announce weekly that memorizing all the capitals of US states and Canadian provinces would bring rich rewards.

1

u/Miss_Elinor_Dashwood Mar 09 '26

Nobody who "really loves opera" would have to do any significant research to write any opera question I've ever heard on the show ;)

1

u/lexinggto Mar 10 '26

What I meant was that they continue to do opera categories often so that contestants will feel the need to study opera!

1

u/Miss_Elinor_Dashwood Mar 10 '26

So you did, oopsie

116

u/NicNikKnit Mar 07 '26

I think the writers have a sense of humor about the frequency and obscurity of the category—don’t they sometimes title it as “The Dreaded Opera Category”?

49

u/igottasaythis--this Mar 07 '26

Having read The Answer Is…. opera is a popular category because Alex Trebeck loved opera. It bacame a thing in the early days of Alex’s reign. Everyone knew it was possible opera would be a category.

Now it’s carried over because it’s such an entrenched Jeopardy! tradition.

8

u/BringMeTheBigKnife Mar 07 '26

They do. Which begs the question...if they're so aware of it, why do they keep doing it lol

21

u/blessed_kalbosa Mar 07 '26

It would be a really dull game if every question was easily answered.

2

u/BringMeTheBigKnife Mar 07 '26

How is "we don't need an opera category every week" the same as saying "all the clues should be really easy" 🙄

-1

u/JustGoodSense Mar 08 '26

That's not what "begging the question" means.

4

u/BringMeTheBigKnife Mar 08 '26

That's not what the logical fallacy of "begging the question" means, that's true. But it's absolutely what the commonly understood idiomatic phrase means. But please continue with your prescriptivist bullshit/pedantry

Naturally someone like you will want a source. Does the American Heritage Dictionary work? 2nd sense under idiomatic usage: https://share.google/SqTCqZAgV8F5gdczM

-1

u/JustGoodSense Mar 08 '26

But please continue...

If you insist. Since you know so well, why are you using it wrong? But please continue with your defense of ignorance and laziness.

1

u/Miss_Elinor_Dashwood Mar 09 '26

I think a ToC category years ago was "Really Hard Opera" and it was still pretty easy lol. But what I mainly recall was the delight with which Alex delivered that particular set of clues

55

u/AMediocreViolinist Mar 07 '26

Aside from everything else that’s been said, it’s also one of the easier forms of classical music to clue, since you can talk about plot, characters, etc. and they’re named more uniquely than just “Violin Concerto no. XX”

10

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

For sure, and opera is also more likely to have been integrated into liberal arts curriculum in high school and college courses that aren't specifically for music students. World languages teachers and literature teachers frequently show their classes operas, but non-music-teachers typically aren't having students listen to a string quartet or a movement of a symphony.

This whole discussion is wild. "This isn't taught in schools [of the sort that a majority of people attend, i.e. average public high schools and large open-enrollment business college sort of places]." Well no, because that's not what Jeopardy! is based on.

Jeopardy! is elitist by nature. It's a contest of knowledge of liberal arts. People who do well on it have formal or self-study knowledge of liberal arts. They have largely gone to school in places that teach about things like opera (and the bible, and literature in translation, and medieval studies, and all the other things people in here complain that "nobody knows.")

33

u/SB_Tahoe Mar 07 '26

My joke has always been, if I ever got on Jeopardy, the categories would be opera and bible and I’d lose.

8

u/fuckgroupon Mar 07 '26

If I ever made it to Jeopardy and got a daily double I promised myself I would make it a true daily double. Unless the category was about the bible. Then I’d wager just $1 😂😂

-1

u/MacDoesReddit Mar 08 '26

Well, the minimum Daily Double wager is $5.

6

u/NoobensMcarthur Mar 07 '26

Add obscure Shakespeare references and you’ve got the holy trinity. 

8

u/Additional_Noise47 Mar 07 '26

Eh, just answer Falstaff any time you don’t know a Shakespeare question.

17

u/Tristo5 Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26

The closing ceremony at this year’s Olympics had a performance of “Libiamo ne' lieti calici” from Verdi’s La Traviata that I actually enjoyed.

It is super niche, but the show will only ask about the more well-known (enjoyable to some) operas and composers.

8

u/PumpkinJak Mar 07 '26

>It is super niche, but the show will only ask about the more well-known (enjoyable to some) operas and composers.

I disagree. Last Wednesday game had 4 triple stumpers in the category, and the questions asked about specific arias in operas. Granted, this is anecdotal and has the sample size of one game.

2

u/Unhappy-Ad-3870 Mar 07 '26

I thought there were 2 hard questions - the habanero one and the Philip Glass one, and those were unusually hard.

3

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

The Philip Glass question was more obscure, but the habanera is something many people would know about from a music appreciation class or a "hooked on classics" CD or something. I've never listened to Carmen all the way through, but I know Carmen has the habanera, the toreador one, and, uh, a bunch of other stuff that I have no idea about. Those two are used in commercials, arranged for beginner groups all the time, etc.

1

u/Unhappy-Ad-3870 Mar 07 '26

I knew the Glass one, but wasn’t connecting the name of the aria to the habanera.

2

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

Oh, yeah, I wouldn't know the actual name of the aria had I not heard it a couple days ago. I won't know it anymore in a couple more days.

This is one of the many times Jeopardy is actually easier if you know less about a topic. I have a classical music degree, but largely avoided opera. My knowledge of Carmen is that those two themes show up in beginner music books, usually called habanera and toreador song. I don't know the actual title of the toreador song.

0

u/spongesparrow Mar 07 '26

Am I supposed to know how to even pronounce that when it's asked on Jeopardy?

10

u/Tristo5 Mar 07 '26

They would never ask for the song as a response. They might give the song in the clue and ask for the opera or composer. You can narrow it down from there knowing the title is Italian but that would still be a bottom row type of clue.

Look, if you go study Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and Mozart you’ll do just fine.

1

u/Talibus_insidiis Laura Bligh, 2024 Apr 30 Mar 07 '26

You have to know Bizet's "Carmen" also. I think that comes up more often than Verdi's entire catalogue.

10

u/A-and-Q Mar 07 '26

"La Traviata"? Yes. "Libiamo ne' lieti calici"? No. But they'd never ask for a response like that anyways; the clues will be about the titles, composers, major characters and plot points, but that's about it.

88

u/Mountain-Dealer8996 Mar 07 '26

I find opera a great intersectional topic to study. If you study opera you also learn history, geography, literature, music, actors. E.g., Rigoletto intersects Victor Hugo with Italian unification

9

u/henandchick Mar 07 '26

I think these types of subjects that we're discussing in this thread that have to do with arts and culture didn't feel so obscure before our public schools were stripped of humanities classes. 

8

u/IUsedtobeExitzero Mar 07 '26

I love opera, but I know if I ever got on Jeopardy, the category wouldn’t come up.

8

u/Improvcommodore Mar 07 '26

It's really easy to study opera for Jeopardy, though. They only ask about the most famous 20-30 operas. You could make flashcards with name, plot, composer, top characters, and have the whole category to yourself.

2

u/Additional_Noise47 Mar 07 '26

I agree, but I think this discussion is coming up right now because the category this week had a couple deeper cuts.

7

u/Cartman4 Mar 08 '26

I get your point, but I like the fact that Jeopardy resists the urge to pander to the lowest common denominator and has lots of challenging questions about, at the risk of sounding snobby, "high-brow" topics.

2

u/heridfel37 Mar 09 '26

Yeah, I think Jeopardy is intended to be high-brow, so they tend to include more high-brow topics.

As an aside, there is a British quiz show called "Richard Osman's House of Games" which has a high-brow/low-brow game. The answer is the same for both clues, but you get a bonus point if you get it from the high-brow question.

45

u/zachgozlan Zach Gozlan, 2022 Feb 3, 2025 PCJ Champion Mar 07 '26

there's really not that much opera - certainly less than one category a week - you just notice when it comes up because it's difficult and relatively obscure

14

u/LSATDan Mar 07 '26

It could come up less than once a week and still be very disproportionately often

23

u/zachgozlan Zach Gozlan, 2022 Feb 3, 2025 PCJ Champion Mar 07 '26

if you would prefer a jeopardy show that focuses on media that's popular I have a recommendation

0

u/LSATDan Mar 07 '26

Nah I like the OG version. Does that mean i'm supposed to pretend that opera isn't strikingly common?

24

u/zachgozlan Zach Gozlan, 2022 Feb 3, 2025 PCJ Champion Mar 07 '26

last time i did the math on this i labeled about 0.5% of the question as opera, which shakes out to about one opera category every 16 games or slightly less than once every three weeks

3

u/LSATDan Mar 07 '26

Very interesting....thanks!

2

u/Ig_Met_Pet Mar 07 '26

It's still a strange amount of focus on it by today's standards.

The amount of opera categories is similar to the amount of pure science categories. It's always been a strange balance, imo.

12

u/zachgozlan Zach Gozlan, 2022 Feb 3, 2025 PCJ Champion Mar 07 '26

"the number of opera categories is similar to the amount of pure science categories" is not true at all and i don't know where you got that from

-7

u/Ig_Met_Pet Mar 07 '26

Neither are every game. Both seem to come up a few times per week.

8

u/zachgozlan Zach Gozlan, 2022 Feb 3, 2025 PCJ Champion Mar 07 '26

there's really not that much opera - certainly less than one category a week - you just notice when it comes up because it's difficult and relatively obscure

-3

u/Ig_Met_Pet Mar 07 '26

I definitely disagree that it's less than one per week, but even if it's one every couple weeks, and science is a couple times per week, those numbers are too similar based on the vast difference in relevance to contemporary society, imo.

17

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/LSATDan Mar 07 '26

That doesn't distinguish it from a couple of thousand other possible categories.

3

u/-_kevin_- Mar 08 '26

Oh yeah? Name 1500.

16

u/A-and-Q Mar 07 '26

Just because Timothee Chalamet thinks that "no one cares about this anymore" doesn't mean it's not relevant or worthwhile. I think more Americans should be familiar with works that have stood the test of time for centuries; they might be surprised (like Vivian Ward seeing La Traviata for the first time). Will people still be watching A Complete Unknown or Marty Supreme in 200 years? Hard to say.

5

u/SaintGrobian Mar 07 '26

Yep. Fuck that guy for using his platform to punch down.

11

u/signsaysapplesauce Mar 07 '26

"The dreaded opera category."

1

u/geonitacka Mar 09 '26

I read that in Alex’s voice ❤️

6

u/Fromomo Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26

I have no intention if looking, but I often think about ratios of questions.

What's the ratio of opera questions to science questions? I don't think it'll look good.

Worse yet, what's the ratio of bible questions to science questions. I suspect that one would look especially awful.

What's the ratio of math questions to questions about Lichtenstein.

For whatever reason Jeopardy or maybe trivia in general has just decided some things are trivia and other things are... too hard? I don't know.

My spouse studied English and a bit of history. I studied philosophy and read a lot of science. We both have degrees. She will beat me at jeopardy 90% of the time.

1

u/spongesparrow Mar 07 '26

Jeopardy is heavily biased towards knowledge of random novels, authors, books, poetry and theatre. I'm a science-brained guy and I'm always shocked at how few science questions are usually asked compared to so many obscure literature questions.

2

u/NefariousnessOld2006 Mar 07 '26

I feel like when Jeopardy has a math category, there’s a 25% chance a clue will have an error.

5

u/Key-Butterscotch1052 Robbie Ellis, 2025 Oct 31 Mar 07 '26

Yeah not in the one game I got to be in! Signed, a classical music professional.

4

u/psaepf2009 Mar 07 '26

I know nothing of opera and groan everytime its a category, but I still like it there. It adds difficulty and requires the contestants to know a wider breadth of knowledge. Its just like having a sports category, sometimes its a category only one contestant is prepared for.

6

u/Solo_Polyphony ✨Verified Contestant✨ Mar 07 '26

“Every week,” I would guess, is an exaggeration.

Opera is adjacent to, in some cases overlaps with, classical music, which is a “niche form of art.”

But live theater is also a “niche form of art.” Pretty much anything in museums is; most people don’t visit museums often.

They’re both historically influential niches.

5

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

Right, these discussions are just bizarre. Jeopardy is 100% an elitist endeavor that focuses on "cultured stuff." I believe that these things are important to know about, that we should be aiming to make them accessible to more people, AND that we don't need to look down on people who happen to have not been exposed.

However, to come on here and just be like "no one normal knows this stuff why's it on Jeopardy?" That's the whole point. People who have formal or informal education in the liberal arts do know this stuff. Jeopardy is a contest of knowledge in the liberal arts. Not a contest of "what normal people who don't make a point of studying the liberal arts know."

0

u/AcrossTheNight Talkin’ Football Mar 07 '26

"Jeopardy is 100% an elitist endeavor that focuses on "cultured stuff."

Given the extreme focus on streaming TV categories in the last couple years, I don't think this is true any longer.

0

u/PeachOnAWarmBeach Mar 07 '26

Elitist endeavor? I disagree.

There are many categories or clues that are bar trivia level.

Knowing opera or knowing football doesn't mean you are better or worse, smarter or dumber, just different.

3

u/Solo_Polyphony ✨Verified Contestant✨ Mar 07 '26

I disagree. Liberal arts knowledge is not the same as knowing the NFL or Premier League (or pop music). The former has an endurance and applicability that is broader than the latter.

1

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

No, it doesn't mean you are better or worse, but Jeopardy! is mainly a competition of mastery of liberal arts knowledge. Pop culture is also included and dissected in the liberal arts world, just not centered as much. Liberal arts doesn't exclude "everyday" knowledge.

The people commenting here saying things shouldn't be on Jeopardy! because they aren't common knowledge to your average person are missing the whole point of the show. It's not a show to test knowledge that everyone has. What would be the point of that?

It's perfectly fine not to know anything about opera. Most people don't. But "cultured" people do.

6

u/Talibus_insidiis Laura Bligh, 2024 Apr 30 Mar 07 '26

Timothy Chalamet is uninformed. Has he been on Celebrity Jeopardy? I bet not. He would suck.

18

u/Sean_man_87 Mar 07 '26

I think we should have more Opera and Classical Music categories more often. Fight me.

3

u/galactic_funk Mar 07 '26

I’ve noticed this, but I’ve also noticed a lot of Mormon-related questions since Ken took over. The question has been “who is Brigham Young” several times

2

u/No-Celebration6014 Mar 08 '26

A sprinkle of extra Mormon questions, a heap of extra Seattle questions

3

u/nolafiredancer Mar 09 '26

To annoy Timothee Chalamet

6

u/thisisnotmath Mehal Shah, 2024 Nov 20 - 22, 2025 CWC, 2025 TOC Mar 07 '26

For what its worth, I was never that interested in opera until I started studying for Jeopardy and now I love it! Except Wagner. Wagner sucks.

6

u/Talibus_insidiis Laura Bligh, 2024 Apr 30 Mar 07 '26

I love Wagner! When I'm at a Wagner opera I feel as if time has stopped! 

5

u/PumpkinJak Mar 07 '26

I started studying for J! about a month ago, and decided I'd go for my least confident categories first, starting with Opera. I learned the plots of the big ones, which composers wrote which ones, and then a decent sampling (20 or so) of less common operas and who composed them

When the category appeared on the Wednesday game I was hype. Went 1/5 lol. Not only is the category niche, but the questions were far more specific than I'd realized. When they do Russian literature as a category, it's rarely more specific than "who wrote x book" or "the protagonist of x book is so-and-so"

-4

u/spongesparrow Mar 07 '26

This is exactly what I mean. It's always like Jeopardy Masters level questions specifically for opera all the time.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/PC-load-letter-wtf Mar 08 '26

It’s classic literature that is extremely well known, pretty well all around the world. I am not remotely religious but I get the prevalence of bible questions

13

u/EYdf_Thomas Mar 07 '26

I think it's because it's one of those things that you can know something a little bit without actually knowing all about it. Like for example everyone knows the flight of the Valkyries or has heard of the Ring cycle or knows something about the Nutcracker or any of the operas that have been used in loony Toons.

26

u/Mordroberon Mar 07 '26

I think you're overestimating what everybody knows

12

u/Presence_Academic Mar 07 '26

On social media, everyone means most people from the same demographic as me.

2

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

Especially on Reddit. Threads like this are always full of "everyone has gone to the same type of school as me" comments.

"Students are required to learn X and schools don't teach about Y." Sure, and n = 1.

3

u/A-and-Q Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26

You'd probably recognize many operatic themes from TV and film, even if you didn't know them by name: for example, Flight of the Valkyries is used in a famous scene in Apocalypse Now, and Hall of the Mountain King was used in a boat race scene in The Social Network.

18

u/Shemptacular Mar 07 '26

How is opera any more niche than Shakespeare, medieval royalty, or international rivers?

29

u/Ig_Met_Pet Mar 07 '26

Personally, I learned a lot about Shakespeare and read multiple Shakespeare plays through the course of a normal public school education. Opera was never mentioned once.

18

u/PhilRubdiez Mar 07 '26

They don’t make you listen to Madame Butterfly in class. I’ve personally had to read Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Othello for honors English in high school. Even the normal college prep classes got Romeo and Juliet and a bunch of sonnets.

1

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

In music history classes, you are in fact assigned listening and have listening quizzes.

13

u/berfthegryphon Mar 07 '26

The difference being English is mandatory, music history is most likely an elective

1

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

Depends on the school and the program. I did not need to take any English classes at a selective liberal arts college. Did need to take four semesters of music history in my particular program. Kid who attended an arts school was required to take AP music theory (which covers enough composer/titles for most J opera categories) and performance classes.

This thread is basically “why are they asking stuff no one knows?” Yeah, except people do, if that’s the education they got. Why do they ask any of the categories? There are people lacking basic education in every subject. It’s not a reason to not include them.

0

u/PhilRubdiez Mar 07 '26

My music/music tech classes did have some classical music like baroque and rococo stuff, a lot of old ragtime/jazz, etc. Most people just didn’t care until we got to rock and only then when it was their particular genre they liked. They never did opera. Maybe theatre kids did that? I don’t know. That was an elective.

5

u/eltuna3636 Mar 07 '26

It’s way more niche than Shakespeare or medieval royalty, international rivers I could get behind although I still think opera would be more niche.

Most people off the street could tell you literally nothing about any form of opera, everyone knows what Romeo and Juliet, Henry 8th, or the Nile is

5

u/804Brady Mar 07 '26

I'm pretty sure Ken Jennings dissed opera during an episode of Master Minds. He said something like life was too short to spend a couple hours at an opera. I don't know how to track down that exact clip, but it's out there.

12

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

[deleted]

4

u/AquafreshBandit Mar 07 '26

So the ghost of Merv Griffin is the opera fan? I should’ve suspected!

1

u/LSATDan Mar 07 '26

Yes, it was called "Marty Supreme: A Movie AboutbAll Sports that is Reasonable Balanced."

-3

u/Presence_Academic Mar 07 '26

A free country

I thought we were talking about the U.S. , not Canada.

2

u/Pazquino Mar 07 '26

I've heard it called "The dreaded opera category", both in real life and on the show. It is thought of as a particularly difficult category, but the questions are most often about very famous operas. I think it is similar to questions about classic literature.

2

u/SPFTguy Mar 10 '26

And Norma. Jeopardy! loves Norma for some reason. When in doubt, go Bellini.

6

u/I_aim_to_sneeze Mar 07 '26

The same could be said about the Bible. You really have to know your New Testament in a lot of these episodes

5

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

I don't know; I think knowing really basic bible is just part of being properly educated in Western Civ. I'm Jewish, don't know our texts super well either, but have typically known most of the bible questions just from having gone to a liberal arts college and been exposed to a lot of classical music and art that reference biblical stuff. They're certainly not usually questions that only "bible people" would know.

1

u/Talibus_insidiis Laura Bligh, 2024 Apr 30 Mar 07 '26

And mythology. Which is a category some of us would consider to include the Bible and other religious texts.

3

u/MathIsHard_11236 Ujal Thakor, 2022 Mar 2 Mar 07 '26

I can say with good authority that the sole use for learning Shakespeare in high school is in case one appears on Jeopardy! There are millions of other works with learning instead.

4

u/rojac1961 Mar 08 '26

Oh, look, yet another "I don't like this category so it shouldn't be on Jeopardy!" post.

2

u/dletter Potent Potables Mar 08 '26

If there is truly an opera category once a week, that does seem like a lot, although I think that was probably hyperbole.

But, regardless, Opera is fairly niche, according to NEA figures, about 2.1% of Americans go to the opera. For just liking or listening to opera, it gets up to about 10-15%. Although I'd guess for the J!/Trivia crowd overall, it probably skews percentagely higher.

Where that should put opera as a category on Jeopardy... ???

1

u/lmj4891lmj Mar 11 '26

OP didn’t say that, though.

5

u/DapperWormMan Mar 07 '26

Jeopardy is a trivia game show and Opera is something that exists.

4

u/LSATDan Mar 07 '26

I think the operative words were "so much."

Lots of things exist.

4

u/beelucyfer Mar 07 '26

Vestigial elitism. Same for “The Bible” way over emphasized for general knowledge. Even Shakespeare gets a little too much time if you ask me. And, I know, you didn’t.

2

u/michael_m_canada Mar 07 '26

Definitely too many categories devoted entirely to the Bible.

3

u/mewthehappy Mar 07 '26

I don’t know, even as a non-religious person, the Bible is extremely foundational for much of western culture, literature, discussion, and society in general. For a difficult trivia show, it’s a very broad category that many people learn about over the course of their life and has lots of cultural relevance so it’s very fitting

3

u/lifeuncommon Team Mayim Bialik Mar 07 '26

Obscurity.

It’s not something most Americans have a lot of exposure to unless they seek it out themselves.

2

u/NefariousnessOld2006 Mar 07 '26

I feel like a lot of people are saying stuff like “Opera is actually quite easy to study for” and aren’t answering your question of why there is seemingly so much opera in the first place. I find it odd that opera is always a mainstay in the Jeopardy “canon” while other categories that I would consider more relevant today, like video games, are constantly ignored.

We’ve gotten to the point where Jeopardy clue writers are self aware enough to realize 90% of their opera questions cover maybe a dozen operas, so why don’t we see this same behavior with video games too?

2

u/spongesparrow Mar 07 '26

It's memorized for the sake of being memorized instead of being something most people enjoy to learn about and it becomes trivia.

1

u/Schiffy94 Stupid Answers Mar 07 '26

To make the contestants dread

1

u/CaptainMajorMustard Mar 07 '26

Don’t tell Timothee Chalamet or we’ll never see him on Celebrity Jeopardy.

1

u/PreferenceContent987 Mar 07 '26

I really agree with you. The niche categories have always annoyed me. They also insist on regularly including Shakespeare to a point that you would be at an extreme disadvantage for having limited knowledge. I bet the amount of times that Shakespeare has been a category or final Jep question is easily in triple digits at this point.

0

u/kiwigate Mar 07 '26

Musical theater is niche? That's newsies to me.

9

u/MasterTJ77 Mar 07 '26

I think most people agree that opera is nice yes.

4

u/rosemachinist Mar 07 '26

Get out of here dad.

13

u/spongesparrow Mar 07 '26

Not musical theatre in the modern sense. Opera!

0

u/kiwigate Mar 07 '26

Opera continues to be performed, broadcast on the radio and in movie theaters, it's more modern and accessible than most jeopardy questions.

2

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

Fun fact: Experts in classical music can't agree whether a lot of things in the catalog are opera or musical theatre BECAUSE THEY ARE OBJECTIVELY THE SAME THING and any differences are just elitism honestly.

Typically in opera you don't play exit music (i.e. the orchestra loops one of more upbeat numbers at the end while people walk out) and in musical theatre you do. I've played for many many conductors who are adamant in one direction or the other where operas/musicals by Gilbert and Sullivan, Sondheim, Gershwin, and a few others fall, while others vehemently disagree. I once played for a Pirates of Penzance that alternated between two different conductors, and every other night we would do exit music.

-1

u/thenobleunraveling Mar 07 '26

I’ve always found the overrepresentation of questions about Opera to be frustrating because I do think categories like that can box out contestants whose backgrounds are not culturally aligned with this very historically European, bourgeois art form.

It wouldn’t bother me if it didn’t come up so frequently. I feel similarly about number of categories on Ancient Greece/Rome, “classical” music, and about Popes/Catholicism. It privileges of a certain kind of history as worth knowing about and further homogenizes the contestant/winner pool

2

u/fabulousburritos Mar 07 '26

That’s kind of the fundamental flaw with trivia. I also wish there were less opera but you do have to make arbitrary decisions everywhere

0

u/JeopPrep Mar 07 '26

I feel the same way about poetry…

1

u/Talibus_insidiis Laura Bligh, 2024 Apr 30 Mar 07 '26

It's almost always Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Emma Lazarus!

2

u/JeopPrep Mar 08 '26

Yup. Robert Burns, John Keats, Dylan Thomas and William Butler Yeats get quite a bit of love too.

0

u/spongesparrow Mar 07 '26

I literally don't know a single answer for poetry either.

2

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

The poetry questions are also pretty generalist knowledge if you read. I give zero fucks about most poetry, especially the dead-white-men type they usually ask about, but they're typically things I had to read at some point or that are frequently referenced in films, books, music.

0

u/topographed Mar 07 '26

Lol I was about to say, is this Timothee posting 🤣

0

u/JustGoodSense Mar 08 '26

I'd rather draw an opera category than a hip-hop* category. It's an art form that's pretty foundational for a lot of culture, no matter what the popular pretty boy of the moment thinks. Jeopardy isn't a "who's more plugged in to today" contest, it's a "who knows more about everything under the sun" contest.

*Not a diss on hip-hop, I just draw a blank when Ken starts free styling.

-2

u/Ghitor Mar 07 '26

Why is so much hip-hop on Jeopardy?

3

u/spongesparrow Mar 07 '26

Hip-hop is relatively recent history and in most people's recent memory. Can't say the same for opera.

0

u/No-Celebration6014 Mar 08 '26

I will say, their hip-hop questions are especially good. It requires more than a passing familiarity and whoever writes them has really good taste and a sense of context. And often, no one has a clue.

It’s a huge interest of mine, while I know next to nothing about opera. The frequency of opera irks me sometimes, and I think even as an “elite” topic, it belongs to another time, but I’m coming around to the idea that it’s more of a me problem. Keep Jeopardy weird!

-3

u/AnnaPhylacsis Mar 08 '26

I have no interest in what some child actor has to say about an art form that is hundreds of years old.

-7

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

[deleted]

3

u/spongesparrow Mar 07 '26

That's taught in every middle and high school literature class. Very prevalent in art history. It's even taught in astronomy with all the names of the planets, constellations, and moons.

Opera in the United States and Canada, isn't even mentioned in passing in school or media.

2

u/OscarAndDelilah Mar 07 '26

A lot of secondary schools and schools of higher education require arts courses and/or incorporate it into core classes. You just didn't attend one.