You talk of battles to be won, now here you come like Don Ju-an, he's better than an o-per-a!

John .... we are going to the Viennese opera if it KILLS us.

Not only are they playing "Die Zauberflo:te" by the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who LIVED in that city (*heart palpitations*), but ALSO they are playing the BEST and most BEAUTIFUL opera in the world, not to mention the fault is yours for getting me to like it anyway, "La Boheme"!!!!

I don't care how much it costs. I would give both arms, all my fingers and toes and probably my left leg to go to BOTH.

Of course they also have "Siegfried" by *cough*wagner*cough*... but .... that's not as important!

Oh my gosh ... they also have "Swan Lake". I've been dying to see that forever. Holy cow. After I marry my French millionaire, I'm going to have a second house in Austria. Near Vienna.

They've also got "Tosca" ... and another Wagner opera ... this is unbelievable. How many operas do they have going at once? Lordy, how many primma donnas can they afford to hire!? "Nabucco"! "Fidelio"! "La Traviata"! And the obligatory "Nutcracker"! Ho...lee... cow. My life's goal was once to see a Mozart opera, so I could have died happy after "Don Giovanni" a year and a half ago (before YWW). Now I've gotten a bit greedy. ;)

The monthly program is available here. It will test your operatic languages. But of course all the famous names are recognizeable at once (such as "Boheme").

In fact, that is a way I recommend becoming familiar with the languages -- memorize all Rodolfo's aria's from La Boheme Act I. (It's easy stuff, too) Listen to it over to hear how the language is pronounced. German is a bit more tricky... it's difficult to sing the umulat, and the other vowels with the ":" over them. I don't know what they're called, and I'm still trying to figure out how to pronounce them. I suspect there's something e-sih about the "o:", and something eh-ish about the "a:". Right now I'm working through a Berlitz teach-yourself-German with a German grammar book, and Mozart's "Dies Bildnis ist Benzaubernd scho:n".

Did you know that if you half-translate the title "I am a Rock, I am an Island" so that you have "Bin ich Rock, Bin ich Island", you get "I am a Coat, I am Iceland"?

Also, John, I'm giving you access to post in this blog if you would like to.

Oh my gosh, Gounod's "Romeo and Juliette"...

Before I get too lost in this fantasyland, I am looking at ticket prices for "Zauberflote" and "Boheme".

October 2nd, La Boheme is listed as "Price category B" (or "Prieskategorie"), which means the absolute cheapest, worst seats are ...

9 Euro??? 10 bucks???
The next one up is 25 Euro, about 30 bucks! After that, 36 Euro, $43! That's, like, nothing! Rome opera was no less than 60 or 70 bucks a pop, German opera was likewise highly expensive. Hooooly cow. We paid $30 for our "family circle" seats at the Met! That roooooocks so hard!!!!

I would say shell out the $43, and then go see another for $10. I wonder why they're $10, they must have some kind of view obstruction or something. Two operas for $53 is, like, nothing. Not to mention it's another Zefirelli production -- I believe he did the sets for Don Giovanni when we saw it. I don't know what "Inszenierung" is, but the "bild" in "Bühnenbild" leads me to believe sets. He did both "Inszenierung" and "Bühnenbild".

La Boheme:

September:
25th, Saturday
29th, Wednesday
October:
2nd, Saturday
6th, Wednesday

And that's it. And Die Zauberflo:te is Preiskategorie A, which means it's more expensive. In fact, most of the other operas are Prieskategorie A. They go for 1O E, 29 E, and 44E, which means $12, $35, and $53.

Good luck navigating the not-very-well-planned site, and pitifully-planned "English" site (I braved the German with the help of Babelfish). You can click here for the opera plan (to note where the cheap seats are), or if you want to plug the URL in to babelfish, it is http://www.wiener-staatsoper.at/Content.Node2/sitzplaene/stop_sitzplan.html .

O soave fanciulla
che dolce viso
di mite circonfuso
alba lunar
in te, vivo ravviso
il sogno ch'io vorrei
sempre sognar