A long night at the Opera

It has been a week since I have contributed to the blog so I better get moving! I think I have been taking this vacation thing a little too seriously. One must remember one has responsibilities even while one vacation.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry my sisters Kathie and Francesca are visiting us and while talking to Kathie way back in April she said a great experience would be to attend the world famous Opera in Verona. She looked into the possibility of securing tickets. It was a delightful surprise when she told us that indeed tickets were available and that she requested that we be her guests at this historical (for us) event. So on Sunday we left Msgr and headed for Verona. It was a leisurely journey as we had plenty of time to get ther, get into our hotel, have dinner and then make the 9:15PM performance. We chose to take the short cut and ferried the car across the lake to Verenna, had lunch in this delightful historic town and then headed out on the rest of the journey. It was about 180 kilometers and with the in car GPS system we went straight to the hotel. As we were approaching the hotel we decided that it would be best to go to the "will call" desk and get the tickets to avoid a rush later. This necessitated driving into "old town" Verona on a late Sunday afternoon and we began to share the streets and sidewalks with about 100,000 pedestrians and a myriad of one way very narrow streets. It was a complete maze as we got deeper and deeper into the bowels of Verona. Whoever said you couldn't get there from here was almost right! Here we are looking for this gigantic famous arena, we were literally yards from it, the GPS is completely confused, and we're ready to back to mezzegra and start all over. I finally take some aggressive action and go the wrong way on a one way street and then there right in front of us is the Arena and the doorway for the will call tickets. Of course by now we are the only car with. in a 1000 yards of any other vehicles and are being swarmed by about 25,0000 people. No problem! Kathie and Nani get the tickets and we slowly drive away without running over anyone. 15 minutes later we are at the hotel. Actually we see the hotel but are going the wrong way on an incredibly wide street with five lanes in both directions. I pull far right and proceed to pull a ten lane u-turn. After what we had just been through this almost seemed like a legal maneuver!

As I said the Opera started at 9:15PM and we heard that it was about three hours long. I won't go into the story of "Aida", I will leave it to the reader to check it out on the Internet but I do have a few comments. First of all to just be in the Verona Arena and to contemplate it's historical significance is quite moving. The night was a little too warm but not overly oppressive. A totally clear sky. When we sat down in our seats and looked around it was breathtaking! Kathie broke the bank with fantastic seats, slightly elevated, to the left side about 60 feet from the massive stage. Part of the spectacle is the incredible sets. You really felt like you were in ancient Egypt. The production spared no expense. Multiple extras as soldiers, slaves, dancers, etc. I, of course, knew none of the performers but they all were incredibly talented. You really never knew what they were specifically singing but as long as you knew the story it did make sense. Finally the fat lady sung indicating the end of this 4 hour opera. After much cheering and bravos we headed back to the hotel and finally got to bed about 2AM. Thanks, Kathie for a memorable evening.

To be continued....