When you travel to somewhere with a rich cultural history such as Vienna, you pretty much have to go with the flow and investigate things outside your normal comfort zone. Yesterday, I went to the opera. I’ve never been one to appreciate Opera, but if I was to do it once, I might as well go see opera in one of the finest and oldest opera houses in the world.
The Austrian Opera house is old. It is also gorgeous and has amazing acoustics. On the day of the opera, an hour before the show starts, they open up tickets for standing room areas (for the peasants) at an absurd amount of 3 euros. To put it into perspective, a bottle of mineral water or coca cola costs 3.30 euros. We got tickets for the standing room area in the gallery, which is in the upper upper deck of the opera house. If you thought Massey Hall’s upper deck was high, just wait until you see this one. At least five stories up, the standing room area of the Austria Opera house makes you realize why all those people have those little binoculars. Economic lines were drawn – rich people at the bottom, poor people at the top. Pretty much the opposite of Drake’s song.
Coat check was mandatory and free, and when you go to your standing spot (it’s a free for all), you mark the spot by tying your scarf around the rail you’ll be leaning on. How convenient! As you would imagine, a lot of people were dressed up in their best suits and evening gowns. I even wore a dress shirt for the occasion (even though I have worn it about four times this trip and haven’t washed it yet). It’s quite a scene and for a brief, fleeting moment in time, you can see what it’s like to be in the elite. The thing I love about Europe is that even in an expensive venue like this, the drink prices were exactly the same as it would be anywhere. I wish MLSE would learn from this. Sadly, you cannot bring drinks into the actual opera hall itself.
The opera I saw was an Italian play called La Boheme, not to be confused with the Quebec mascot La Bonhomme. Written in the late 1700’s, it is about a group of bohemians living in the Latin quarters in Paris. It was basically Friends. There was an on and off relationship between the two leads that seem to come and go for no real reason, the group of people seem to like to hang out in either the local cafe or their overly large apartment and you had your list of sassy/quirky/attractive characters. It was basically Friends.
Obviously, you go an opera for the music and the singing and that was totally impressive. The sopranos on stage had some serious vocal and lung capabilities. I wonder if they ever go karaoke. It is a testament to their talent (and sound engineering) that their singing can reach the upper edges of the Opera House without the use of microphones. I had no real clue what they were singing about since it was all in Italian but luckily each area is equipped with a little display that shows you the screen play in your chosen language. Otherwise I would have had to imagine everything. The musicians were as you would expect, top notch. I wonder if anyone has written some modern operas using synths and some drum and bass. The show was roughly two and a half hours long with a brief intermission in between. There were no encores, but obviously that’s not a thing.
At the end of the day, a pretty unique experience that cost less then a falafel. How can you go wrong?