Angela and I enjoyed a lovely girls night out together. We got tickets to go to the Opera in Verona.
We went to see Aida! Aida is a Egyptian opera about a slave girl and a military hero who fall in love. The biggest problem with their relationship is that Aida is the servant to the princess who is also in love with ???.
It is a beautiful LOVE STORY!
The opera was held at the Verona Coloseum. It is an outdoor coloseum and is one of the oldest complete coloseum in the world! The arena was once used for gladiator fights among other things, but it is now most frequently used as an opera venue. It can hold 22,000 spectators for the summer opera performances.
Boy was I in for a big surprise... The stone "steps" were almost to my waist. The romans must have been 7-8 ft tall if these were "steps" for them!
Before we went to the Opera we went out to dinner at a small restaurant in Verona. All of the restaurants are called bars, even though they are not what we Americans consider a bar. The "bars" in Italy are more like small cafe's or small family run restaurants.
I had lasagna. It isnt like American Lasagna. It has barely any sauce on it!
The opera was all in Italian so I bought a book in order to follow along. I read the script as they performed. It was magical!
I really enjoyed it! The costume's, music, scenery, singers and actors were all AMAZING!
Something funny happend while we were there.... It started to lightly rain!!!! When that happened the orchestra grabbed their instruments and refused to play. Who can blame them? If I had a $1700 violin I would want to protect it too! The Italians pulled coats, scarves, umbrella's, etc out of thin air and started immediately bundling up and covering their heads. Angela told me that they believe you will get sick and die if your kidneys aren't covered in the cold or rain. LOL I thought the whole thing was pretty hilarious! It was barely raining, in Florida we wouldn't even turn on the windshield wippers yet, but the Italians jumped up to head for the hills!
After about 45 minutes of waiting for the opera to start again, a group of what must have been Americans, started the wave! It took a couple of trys for it to catch on, and let me tell you Angela and I tried our hardest to get it going too!
Soon we saw THOUSANDS of Italians jumping up to do the wave! You could spot the Americans in the crowd. We were the noisy ones! I guess in Italy you dont yell as you do the wave! But we DO!!!! LOL
I will have to post the video separately. It is too big of a file for this post!
It took a total of about an hour for the forcast to come back saying that was all of the sprinkle and the opera resumed. When it did Angela and I had much better seats because we took the seats of the people who had hightailed it home!!!
After the opera we decided to go out for cappuccino's and .... you guessed it - GELATO!!! It was WONDERFUL!
We enjoyed our treats while the Italians fought to get out of the parking garage and down the tiny streets, racing to get home! We had a WONDERFUL evening! I will NEVER forget my first opera!
2 comments:
Hi, you were very near... I'm from Verona and used to work in the Arena, too... I think I can explain why people 'duck' for cover when it starts raining: one moment you're enjoying fresh and light droplets, and the next you're in a downpour... that normally happens when clouds come from the lake. You were lucky it stopped, so you could see the whole opera, which is one of the best to witness in such a magical place!
Gio:)
Gio,
Thanks for the explanation! The Arena was definately a "magical place"!
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