A Night at the Opera

It’s been a long time since my last post. I have been dutifully working in the archive, getting lots of work done on research… fun, fun. Thursday I was there and Danny’s friend Yanna happened also to be there doing some research, so we went out for coffee after it closed at 1pm. We decided to go to Starbucks and I learned something very important – there’s no smoking at Starbucks – yay! So, that’s my new favorite Vienna Kaffeehaus. Haha. Unfortunately I hurt my back this week somehow, and I was concerned about it, so I had my first experience going to the doctor. It wasn’t so bad. I had to wait, but the doctor was nice and gave me some medicine and exercises.

Friday was a Catholic holiday, so therefore all stores, offices, everything was closed. The only places that stay open on holidays or Sundays are restaurants. I met Nancy and Guy Hargrove for Indian food at our favotite Indian restaurant.

Saturday Danny, Nancy, Joe (Yanna’s boyfriend) and I planned to stand in line for Stehplatz (standing) tickets for the first opera of Wagner’s tetrology (that means there’s 4) Der Ring des Niebelungen. The first opera is called, Das Rheingold, and it basically sets the scene for what happens in the later operas. There’re snakes, giants, gods, damsels in distress, the whole nine yards.

Since it is especially popular the operas will only be performed once each this season, they sold out as soon as the tickets went on sale a month ago – it’s like a Christina Aguilera concert or something! So, we decided to start waiting for the tickets three hours ahead of time (normally we wait starting an hour and a half before). There were a lot of people there already when we showed up at 4pm and we waited in line and got standing tickets (for only 2 Euros!). Nancy met a 20-year-old guy from Iceland while waiting in line. He was kind of strange, but she talked to him for an hour and a half – hehe. Sorry, Nancy!

We ran and marked our spots with scarves and went to eat and came back. Since it was a special evening we dined at a lovely little eating establishment known here as "Burger King." Oh, wait, I think we weren't supposed to tell Yanna... sorry, Joe! This opera was a mild 2.5 hours, while the other three top 5 hours each. There was no intermission, so that was fun. I sure hope the others have intermissions. So, we enjoyed the singing very much, but decided collectively that we did not care for the sets or the costumes. I have definitely seen sets that I have disliked more than this, but I didn’t think it was particulary thoughtful or introspective – rather it just looked kind of blah. Oh well. All in all it was a great night.