Le Nozze Di Figaro @ The Vienna State Opera

I am excited to report that tonight we officially attended our first real opera and, lucky for us, The Marriage of Figaro was playing so we sort of knew what was going on!  The Don Giovanni marionette show brought out more of an appreciation of opera for me, but tonight took it to a whole new level and I can’t wait till I get a chance to go again.  Paul isn’t quite as enthralled, but he played the part of the good husband and stood through 3/4 of the performance with me, so I can’t complain…

Our day began at the Wiener Prater, a large public park in Vienna’s 2nd district, made up of widespread meadows, an amusement park known as Wurstelprater, and various restaurants & cafes.  The entire park is free to go in, but you pay per ride at the amusement park (ranging from €2-4 each ride).  I had read that you can get great views of Vienna while riding the “Giant Ferris Wheel,” but we decided against it when we got there and saw how run down it looked (the whole place is a bit run down actually).  I love roller coasters and amusement park rides in general, but Paul has recently started to get motion sick so now he refuses to go on them.  Since it’s no fun to do rides alone, we skipped all the rides and walked around eating mini-doughnuts instead

When we got to a stable of mini horses for kids to ride, we noticed an adorable Newfie dog running around off-leash.  Several other people noticed him too and we amusingly watched as one girl and her boyfriend started playing with the dog, who had fixated on a Sid the sloth doll (from the Ice Age movie) she was holding in her hand which I think they had just won at one of those carnie games in the park.   After 10 minutes or so, the girl and her boyfriend started to leave but the dog kept following them wanting the doll!  Eventually they gave in and let the dog have Sid, and he happily trotted over to the horse’s stables to chew on his new toy.  That’s what you get for teasing a dog with a toy!

As we finished at Prater, an email came through on Paul’s Blackberry advising us that the standby tickets we wanted for the Opera weren’t allocated.  When I had looked up the schedule on our second day in Vienna, I was excited to see Le Nozze Di Figaro was playing tonight, but the only tickets left were 200 euro each, which was a lot more than we were prepared to spend on our first opera, so I put our name in for standby tickets in the 10-40 euro price range. Two days ago I would have been disappointed by this email, but yesterday I learned in Rick Steves’ book that 567 dirt cheap (€3-4) standing room tickets are released for sale 80 minutes before show time, so we had a backup plan to get in! 

Since we had 2 hours to kill before we could buy tickets, we headed back to city center to try a restaurant called Reinthalers Beisl that was recommended in Rick Steves’ book.  Everything was quite good, but our eyes were bigger than our stomachs and we ordered 3 dishes to share (the schnitzel, brats with sauerkraut, and goulash), which was a ridiculous amount of food.   But the brats, which were our third choice, turned out to be the best dish so I’m glad we got them!

According to Rick Steves, there’s no rush to line up for standing room tickets unless someone special like Plácido Domingo is in town, so we took our time getting to the Opera, arriving 90 minutes before show time.  We were surprised to see a fairly large lineup forming and quickly got in line since Rick’s book also said to try to get tickets in the “parterre” section for a front and center view, directly below the Emperor’s box, if you’re among the first 160 people (see picture above).

We struck up conversation with two guys behind us who were music students from the UK and Germany studying in Vienna, and they helpfully explained how standing room works.  There are three standing room sections (parterre, balcony, and gallery) and each section is made up of steps (sort of like at the movies) with rails in front of you for you to lean on.  On the rail there is a small screen which, during the performance, provides a translation of the opera in either English or German.  After you buy your ticket you go inside, pick a spot at a rail, and secure that spot by tying a scarf to the rail.

Following their good advice, as soon as we got our tickets we rushed to the parterre section to get a spot before checking our coats.  We managed to get one of the last remaining rail spots near the back (still a great view) and secured our place by tying our hats to the  rail since neither of us knew to bring a scarf and you’re not allowed to use your jacket.  Normally you would stand 4 people per rail on each side (right and left), but on a busy night like tonight people were squeezing in wherever they could fit, including in the middle area between the left and right side where there was no rail to lean on.  If you manage to be among the first into the parterre section (you’ll have to line up way earlier), the front row gives you an awesome completely unobstructed view and you lean on wall which separates the parterre standing section from the expensive €200 per ticket seats in front.

After our last experience of standing through Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe, I had to promise Paul I wouldn’t insist on staying through the entire performance in order for him to agree to come with me.  We initially planned to stay for just one act, but having the rail helped and Paul agreed to try to stay for the entire opera.  After act II, though, his feet were tired and he was ready to go.  With some begging and pleading I managed to get him to go back inside for act III after the intermission, but we skipped act IV and left after that. 

While my knowledge of opera isn’t good enough to hear the difference between the professionals singing tonight and the aspiring students we heard back at UBC, I felt like seeing tonight’s opera was a much grander experience because of the setting.  The Vienna State Opera House is beautiful and historic, the orchestra and acoustics sounded wonderful, and the costumes and sets were amazing.  I wish we could have saw the entire performance, but I was very happy that I got to see act III because it has my favorite songs in the opera.  If you’re going to Vienna, definitely go get some standing room tickets to an opera!  Or, as Rick Steves suggested, wait outside and bum tickets off people leaving during the intermission since many don’t stay for the entire performance!