Verona Arena - A night at the opera!

The whole reason for us to go to Verona was for a night at the opera. Every year they hold an opera festival which lasts during the summer and is held in the Roman arena in the middle of Verona. We went to see the first night of Carmen showing and it was just fabulous!

The sets were all done by Franco Zefferelli and were beautiful. Plus the stage is about three times the size of a normal theatre so you fit many more singers and animals on stage! As you can see by the horse above...

It was a great opera, a wonderful experience and one I won't forget for a long while.

Manon at the Royal Opera House

Last night papa and I went to the opera. We were off to see Manon at the Royal Opera House. This is not an opera I've been to see before, in fact I've not seen any Massenet operas before and I wasn't sure what to expect.

I was therefore delighted by the first few strains coming from the orchastra sweeping through the house and transporting me away from dreary life. The opera was stunning, Massenet's composition is just fabulous and I was so pleased to be seeing an opera I hadn't seen before and really enjoying it. Plus the new production by Laurent Pelly was pretty good, the set a little dreary but the costumes amazing!

We were incredibly lucky with the cast, Anna Netrebko as Manon and Vittorio Grigolo as Des Grieux. Plus a host of other very talented singers. I was especially impressed with Vittorio, as a tenor his voice flows over the orchestra and has a power and richness to it which I often feel is lacking in other tenors. My favourite singers are generally deep male singers, bases and britones.

If you have the time and are quick there might be tickets left, I would highly recommend it. And of course if you do go let me know!

A night at the opera

At the beginning of July we went to the opera with my parents, sister, sister's other half and some other friends of my parents. We were off to the Royal Opera House to see Il Barbiere Di Siviglia by Rossini.



And it was fabulous! I would thoroughly recommend it if it comes to an Opera House near you. Although we were nearly thwarted by some different problems, first the lead female singer Joyce DiDonato fractured her leg on the first night! And so was performing in a wheelchair. Amazingly enough this worked really well, all things considered. Then at the beginning of the performance out came a lady and you could hear the collective groan of wondering what had happened. When it was announced the lead male singer had gone down with a cold so would not be singing but would still act and there would be a singer on the side of the stage! Again it worked really well, once you remembered to focus on the acting singer not the singing singer.

The Royal Opera House is also one of my favourite buildings in London. Inside and out. I took some pictures of the floral hall, now called the Paul Hamlyn Hall, which is just stunning. At the top of the picture above you can see the box where you can stand in the Amphitheatre Bar and look down on everyone drinking in the floral hall.

I'd recommend to go just to see the building, and the operas are normally pretty spectacular too!