Teatro Colon

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 stage of Cinderella was impressive, there were four sets that rotated like a clock.  Here was the final ballroom, and the cast giving a final bow.

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.

Coldplay!

Coldplay's tour brought them to Buenos Aires last night - huge bonus for us! They played at the River soccer stadium in Palermo, an outdoor stadium that looks alot like RFK in Washington, DC. We got tickets with our friends Juan and Sole and planned to meet them for dinner before the concert. Unfortunately for us, our bus got stuck in the worst traffic ever and a 30 minute trip turned into a 1.5 hour marathon bus ride to their house. We skipped dinner and had to run to the concert. We missed all 3 opening bands and got to the concert just in time to swallow a plain hamburger before they started playing. The concert was amazing - we had such a great time! According to Chris Martin, Buenos Aires is their favorite place to play. And I believe him.

It rained for a few minutes at the beginning of the concert, but considering that we virtually ran 1.5 miles to the stadium, it was kind of nice to get cooled off.
Coldplay is awesome for many reasons, but I like them even more now because they gave our copies of a live album as we left the arena. It was like a little present at the end of the night - and I LOVE presents! After the concert we grabbed some much needed dinner at Marshall in Belgrano. We were dying of thirst and pretty hungry, so it was lucky for us the service was quick with regard to drinks. The food was good, I got a Caesar Salad (something that you don't find much around here) and Jon got beef milanesa with mashed potatoes. Overall it was a good meal, with a few hiccups in the service; forgotten dishes, incorrect orders and the waiter went MIA more than once. I would go back but earlier next time, by the time we left dinner it was 1:30am, so I'm thinking that our waiter just needed some sleep.

The adventurous part of the night came when we were trying to get a cab. Even though the concert let out at 11:15pm, the streets were still lined with people looking for rides home when we left dinner. The only empty cab that we could find had a moron driver that tried to rob us by charging over six times the fare that we should have been charged - we didn't take the bait. There have not been many times that we have missed owning a car here, but this night was one of those times. We are lucky enough to have amazing friends here and Juan drove us home at 2:30 am - he was our hero. A very fun, and very long, night - we slept like babies.