Two nights. Two operas.

*Nick in Vienna

This past weekend I went to an opera on both Saturday and Sunday night. Saturday was Montiverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea at the Theater an der Wien and Sunday was standing room for Mozart's Don Giovanni. They were both fantastic and I thought I would write just a bit about it.

For Saturday I had an actual seat, the cheapest in the house, but still, an actual seat. It was in a side box on the lowest level in the third row back. I could see decent enough and see the words in German. Poppea is one of the oldest operas (1642-43). The theater itself was very nice. It is amazing that Vienna can support four full-running opera houses. That is ridiculous. Columbus has a handful of operas a year. Vienna, which actually isn't a ton bigger (1 million vs. 2 million) has on most nights 4 operas or ballets in town, as well as multiple orchestra and chamber music concerts. Every performance I've been to so far has been packed, so I don't think they are hurting. The Theater an der Wien concentrates on Baroque operas and premiers from the 21st century.

Sunday night I did standing room for Don Giovanni at the Staatsoper (the big one that I have been to multiple times). It was also fantastic. The conductor, who I could see from my spot in the balcony, did not even open his score. He conducted the whole 3 1/2 hour opera from memory, which is pretty amazing.

Anyway, I hate to keep rambling about these, but it is fast becoming a pretty important part of my life. I am pretty sure I can say that my two favorite forms of entertainment are baseball games and operas, which might be an odd combination and would be sweet if they could be combined. I'm pretty sure that means that we will end up in Nebraska or something, where I can't get either one. But seriously, after I had some sort of weird personal crisis in Paris when we went to see Platee I just can't get enough. So, am I a loser now, or just super pretentious?

Well, enough rambling. Tomorrow I'm actually going to the ballet with Kendra (Jane's cousin) and I'm pretty excited.