Final Jeopardy: Classical Composers (5-26-21)

Today’s Final Jeopardy question (5/26/2021) in the category “Classical Composers” was:

Monsieur Crescendo & Signor Vaccarino (“Mr. Racket”) were derisive nicknames for this composer whose last opera dates from 1829

Semi-final No. 3 of the 2021 Tournament of Champions features: 8x champ Jennifer Quail, a wine tasting consultant from Dowagiac, MI; 19x champ Jason Zuffranieri, a math teacher from Albuquerque, NM; and 2020 College Championship champ Nibir Sarma, a Univ. of Minnesota junior

Round 1 Categories: The Civil War – Transportation – Young People’s Literature – Ones & Zeros – Olympic Sports Equipment – In the Dictionary

Jennifer found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Young People’s Literature” under the $400 clue on the 7th pick of the round. She was in last place with negative $200, $2,000 less than Jason’s lead. She bet $1,000 and she was RIGHT.

Chapters in this work include “The Mock Turtle’s Story” and “The Lobster Quadrille” show

WHAT IS ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND?

Jason finished in the lead with $4,800. Jennifer was second with $4,200 and Nibir was last with $3,400. No clues went uncovered.

Round 2 Categories: Seeing Red – It’s a Mirage – 3 “D” – U.K. Places – Fictional Game Shows – The Ancients Speak

Nibir found the first Daily Double in “U.K. Places” under the $1,200 clue on the 7th pick. He was in third place with $3,000 now, $8,600 less than Jason’s lead. He bet it all and took a shot at it with Birmingham. That was WRONG.

Doing something redundant is like “carrying coals” to this city, formerly a coal-mining center. show

WHAT IS NEWCASTLE?

Jason got the last Daily Double in “The Ancients Speak” under the $1,600 clue, with 9 clues left after it. In the lead with $16,800, he had $2,600 more than Jennifer in second place. He bet $5,000 and guessed “gold” but that was WRONG.

Augustus Caesar said he “found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of” this, which was much nicer! show

WHAT IS MARBLE?

Jennifer finished in the lead with $15,000. Jason was next with $13,400 and Nibir was in third place with $2,800. No clues went uncovered.

TWO of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.

WHO IS ROSSINI?

In 10 Cool Rossini Facts, No. 2 tells us that “he wrote the bulk of his operas in only 10 years”, composing the bulk from 1812 to 1822. He wrote his last –Guillaume Tell (William Tell)– in 1829, after which he retired from opera but continued to write smaller pieces. No. 10 sheds additional light on why Rossini was called “Monsieur Crescendo”: “His nickname came from his perceived overuse of crescendo for dramatic effect. ‘The Crescendo degenerated into a mere mannerism with Rossini, in whose works it is used with wearisome iteration,’ reads the Crescendo entry of Grove’s dictionary of Music and Musicians.”

To find out anything more about the “Signor Vaccarmini” handle, I went to a preview of “Opera in Paris, 1800-1850” on Google Books, which translates Vaccarmini to Hubbub and says that these attacks on Rossini were mostly due to jealousy.

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Nibir went with Verdi. That cost him $2,799 and left him with $1.

Jason got it right. He bet $7,000 and finished with $20,400.

Jennifer got it, too. She bet $14,999 and won the game with $29,999. Jennifer Quail is the third finalist in the ToC. She will join Sam Kavanaugh and Veronica Vichit-Vadakan in the finals.

A triple stumper from each round:

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE ($600) “Last Sacrifice” was the finale of Richelle Mead’s series about special young people attending this school

($1000) Melinda Sordino is the heroine of this novel by Laurie Halse Anderson; the last name Sordino can mean “mute”

More clues on Page 2

2 years ago: BOTH of the players got this FJ in “19th Century American History”

In 1832, by a narrow margin, this state’s legislature rejected considering abolition; a split was completed in 1863 show

WHAT IS VIRGINIA?

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