Vienna: The Opera

The opera Aida was scheduled to play at the Staatsoper, Vienna’s Opera House, the evening of Friday June 26. I had tried to buy tickets online a few weeks ago while in Toronto, but all the “cheap” tickets were sold out, and all that was left were tickets 160 Euros each. We decided that 320 Euros was WAY too much money, so we sadly accepted the idea of not attending an opera in Vienna…
…Until I was walking by the opera house a few days ago when a lady approached me asking if I wanted opera tickets for a good deal. She directed me a few blocks away to this shop on the 2^nd floor of another store (yes I was a little skeptical…).
The man at the shop offered me 2 opera tickets for a very cheap price. He showed me a seating chart, and pointed out where the seats were: the 1^st row of the very top balcony on the very left hand side. Without thinking twice I purchased them.
I told my (very excited) mom about the tickets, but warned her we were very very high up on the balcony. I’m not sure she fully believed me when I described the location of our seats until we got there! We were directed up stairs, then more stairs, and then even more stairs! We finally found out seats:



The opera house was beautiful! Just spectacularly decorated, both inside the auditorium and outside in the hallways and staircases.


From our seats we had a wonderful, birds-eye view of the orchestra:

One thing I found just genius was our individual subtitle screens. Each seat had a small screen for subtitles in either English or German. I’ve never seen anything like it! It was amazing! Much better than the large screen of subtitles above the Toronto Opera House stage.

The opera was fantastic. Absolutely beautiful and magnificent. I loved it!! The story of Aida takes place in Egypt, so the sets and costumes resembled Egypt during a beautiful and prosperous time. Memories of my trip to Egypt came out and added to my enjoyment of the performance.
My mom and I watched the entire performance while leaning forward over the balcony, because if we sat back on our chairs we could only see the subtitles and top rows of the balconies directly across from us!! It was then when I really began to miss and appreciate much more our orchestra level seats at the Toronto Opera House!!
Despite our seats, we thoroughly enjoyed the opera! It was the most amazing one I’ve ever seen! A very wonderful and memorable night!