Well, this is something I would like to share with you…
After living in Vienna for 1,5 year I finally had my first night at the famous, legendary “Wiener Staatsoper” (Vienna State Opera).
Saying it was amazing, wonderful, unforgettable etc… is just futile. Because everyone knows (or can imagine) this.
But being there on Saturday… just feeling the atmosphere, just thinking about how many notorious composers and musicians and ballet dancers and singers and… and… have been there to share their art with all of us, mere mortals… *sigh*… wow, I was really touched and it’s really difficult to put in words how amazing it was to be there.
Anyway, we went to the play (well, can I call this a “play”? Hm, I think so… it was actually a ballet play, but it’s still a play… I am sorry for my ignorance, I am no expert in arts, I am only a mere mortal who was amused to death during the presentation… ), Jenny and I, and it was “Onegin“, an Opera composed by Pyotr Tchaikovsky based on the novel in verse by Aleksandr Pushkin.
I am really glad to be there with Jenny, since she studied Philology and she’s been reading Russian Literature her whole life… it was nice ’cause she explained everything about the characters and about the story… therefore it wasn’t necessary to buy the libretto, hehehehe…
The play was amazing, the ballet company is just perfect and we had a great time at the Opera…
… and then I began to ask myself, why didn’t I go to the Vienna State Opera before?
Hm. I always thought, the tickets to the Opera have to be very very expensive… the best seats are indeed pretty expensive (something around 100-170 Euro)… and we did have very good seats for the “Onegin” because our friend Flávia, who’s a ballet dancer at the Vienna State Opera, got the free tickets for us.
… but there are also other seats which aren’t that expensive! – well, that’s what I thought, but I needed to check it.
Then it was planned that a friend from Dresden, Germany, would come to Vienna on the weekend, and then I decided to organize a night at the Opera with cheap tickets! 🙂
And this was on Friday, 19th September – I got the tickets for the Opera “The Flying Dutchman“, by Wagner.
Well, I have to admit: we had to stand still the whole time (and there was no “coffee break”, they played the 3 acts at once!! :-O ), but it was still an amazing experience. And that was my first live Wagner Opera, and I was really glad I could understand what they were singing – and the Vienna State Opera has also some displays where we can read the lyrics in German and in English, that was pretty useful! 😉

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So that’s actually the aim of this post: sometimes we refuse to do something interesting because we think “it’s too expensive”, or for any other reason. And actually even for something which sounds as fancy as “a night at the opera” there is always a way for anybody to get into it.
Like the old saying: “where there’s a will, there’s a way” 🙂