A Night at the Opera

Friday, April 9, 2010 (Part 7)

Today was my birthday (and Lisa's birthday, too!). My present to myself (in addition to this great trip with Katherine, of course) was tickets to the opera. The Vienna Opera House is considered one of the best opera houses in the world, and we we able to get tickets to see "The Barber of Seville," by Rossini.

I should mention that we almost missed the beginning of the show. I had misremembered the start time. I thought it started at 8:00 p.m. We showed up at 7:00 p.m., thinking we had a full hour to wander around the beautiful interior of the Opera House. We picked up our tickets at the box office and tried to figure out generally where our seats were. Then, we started wandering around. We found an outside balcony where we enjoyed glasses of champagne. Then we found the "Magic Flute" tapestries. Meanwhile, we started to notice that all

the lounges and common rooms were emptying out, and then we heard some chimes. It was a few minutes before 7:30 p.m.

We both looked at each other and realized that the opera was about to start! We started running - through the tapestry hall, up the grand staircase and up to the loge boxes. We were, literally, some of the very last people to take their seats.

Once again, we had excellent seats. We were in a loge box, in the

second row of loge boxes, and we were just before the bend towards the center section. And we had two of the three front row seats in the box! We were at the rail. We were far enough away that we had a great view of the entire stage, but we were close enough that we could see the details of the performers' faces and dress very clearly.

The Barber of Seville is a comedic opera, and it's a very silly story, but it's a lot of fun. So that we would have some idea of what we were watching, Katherine and I read a few summaries of the story line online using the computer in the lobby of our hotel. Also, in front of each seat, there was a small electronic screen that provided a personalized translation of the libretto. They offered several different languages, including (of course) English. This was greatly appreciated -- very helpful. The lyrics of the arias are as silly as the story, but the singing was truly excellent. The soprano was the most outstanding. And the set and costumes were wonderful. The set was constructed like a life-size dollhouse. All in all, this was very entertaining, and I am really glad we did it!