We finally made it to the Teatro Colon, one of the most recommended tourist spots in Buenos Aires, and it took us three years to get there! The Teatro Colon opened in 1908 after almost 30 years of construction - and has sold out virtually every night since. The theater which has near-perfect acoustics and is considered to be one of the top 5 concert venues in the world. The theater has recently gone through renovations, which were scheduled to take 18-months and ended up taking 5 years, finally reopened in May 2010 - for the bi-centennial anniversary of the country.
We were fortunate enough to have friends that wanted to visit the theater, so we joined in with them and got tickets to see "La Cenerentola". According to the website, this is Sleeping Beauty - the opera, but in actuality it is Cinderella - the opera. Luckily we recognized the difference right away. Our tickets were in a box on the lowest level, which was a great place to be, but here is a photo of the multiple balcony levels. Impressive.
The light fixture on the interior of La Sala was painted by Argentine painter Raul Soldi, who painted etherial dancers, musicians and opera singers. It is a beautiful addition to the theater.
A few pictures of us at the theater:
Our box seats! I have to say that the box was great, it was a perfect view of the stage, but as Jon put it "the seats were like watching an opera from your grandmother's dining room table". I concur.
The cast was an impressive show of talent, though admittedly this is my first experience at the opera. I appreciate the talent and the show itself was entertaining and enjoyable. We had an interesting time listening to the Italian lyrics while reading the Spanish subtitles - so it was lucky that we all were familiar with the story of Cinderella going into the night.
It was a great evening, we were glad to have friends to enjoy the opera with - and we all felt much more cultured at the end of the weekend.
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