Europe Trip #1 - April 10, 2022 - Opera

Monkey and I are here and settled in our seats and it is easy to see why the books we love by Eva Ibbotson speak of the Viennese love of their opera.

The space is glorious. Destroyed in bombing in 1945, when it reopened in 1955 the Austrian broadcaster ORF used the opening celebration to transmit one of the first post-war live broadcasts, at a time when there were only about 800 televisions in all of Austria. (Info from here.

I wrote the above as we waited for the opera to begin. The rest is written the following day.

The opera we saw, Der Rosenkavalier is a comedic opera by Strauss. It began at 6 p.m. ran until 10:15, and had two intermissions. Not knowing what we’d think or how long we’d last, we got cheap seats; right by the stage, but with “obstructed views.” We were in a loge box, and we’ve loved those at the Nashville Symphony, so we had hope.

Monkey and Buster walked over from her apartment around 5:30 and we headed out for the two block walk to the opera house.

We were plenty early to wander a bit and be in awe at the space.

The grand staircase really is.

After help from several stewards, we found our loge box. We were seats 8 and 9.

The actual box had five low seats in the front, against the railing, 4 high seats in the back row.

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As you can tell, we can’t see the stage, but we were hopeful for the small video screens. Not seeing the stage is fine, as long as we can see the stage.

Alas, the video screens were for closed captioning only during the performance, and though it offered English as an option, it didn’t work.

So, we enjoyed our view of the orchestra and the audience.

We were able to shift over a seat so I had a view of the front 1/4 of stage right, and Monkey could lean into my lap to catch glimpses. (I would have given her my seat, but she was not interested in sitting by a stranger.)

The little I could see was magnificent. The music was rollicking and joyful. It was fun to watch the orchestra’s faces. They would turn to watch the stage at times, smile at humorous parts, and seemed to have a good time.

I was glad to see lots of women in the orchestra. Only one stand that we could see was shared by two women, the rest all seemed gender mixed or two men. All the musicians and all the cast we could see were white.

It was very warm in the box. I had worn multiple layers and was stripping one of them off in the outer room when one of my loge mates walked in.

She pretended not to notice me peeling off clothes.

We decided to leave at the first intermission and were delighted to find a beautiful sunset and Buster and Buds standing at the corner. They were on their way for gelato.

We both loved the experience and would definitely go again. With our new knowledge we’d be able to pick seats that would be even better for us.

Add us to the list of people in Vienna who love their opera.