The Tandem Spirits Go to the Opera!
Panicale - Our 1st Opera
Since we’ve been in Italy we’ve dipped our toes into the Opera scene. We saw Gioachino Rossini’s L’Occasione Fa il Ladro ossia Il Cambio della Valigia Opera at the Teathron Musike https://www.tmusike.it/pan-opera-festival/pan-opera-festival-2017/ in the quaint village of Panicale with our friend Janice and her husband Dave. The theater is small and we enjoyed the performance.
Florence - Our Second Opera
In February 2020, just ahead of lockdown, we saw Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera Don Pasquale in Florence with our colleague Marco and some of his friends at the Maggio Musicale Florentino theater. https://www.maggiofiorentino.com/en/home. This theater is large and modern. The performances were excellent. One of the great things about opera is the flexibility to play with the settings a bit. In this version, the setting was a casino, complete with slot machines.
Verona - To the Major League
On the way back from our Venice adventure a couple of weeks ago, TandemSpirits jumped into the Major League and went to Verona to see Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata at the Arena in Verona. https://www.arena.it/en
The Arena is a Roman Amphitheater that was built in 30 AD. It was restored during the Renaissance, and they have been staging operas in it since the early 1900s.
We arrived in Verona in the late afternoon, having spent the morning at the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. We made a 7 pm reservations for dinner (very early for dinner reservations in Italy) and went out for a quick walk around town and a spritz at a bar near the arena.
When there is an Opera or other performance at the arena, all the local restaurants are aware of it. When we made our dinner reservations, we were asked if we were attending the Opera.
The restaurant we chose, il Cittolo is a 5 minute walk from the arena. Virginia ordered the tagliatelle with sugo di anitra (duck), and James had Bigoli con Pastisada Dé Caval (horse). Both were excellent. A note about eating horse: in certain regions in Italy, horse is a common dish at restaurants and, as James is an “adventurous eater, ” he likes trying foods that aren’t part of common American gastronomy.
In the Areana
After dinner we walked to the Arena. Everything was very well organized. There were plenty of people available to help find entrances and seats. We did purchase a couple of cushions from a vendor outside, which turned out to be a good thing. It would have been an uncomfortable evening without them. FFP2 masks were mandatory, and seating was spaced so that every other seat was empty, even if you purchased tickets together.
The setting out in the open was perfect. We had excellent seats and the air was electric with anticipation. It always gives me a bit of thrill when I hear the orchestra start to“tune up”. The sets and light were well-done, and in Act 2, as it was getting dark, the full moon started to appear just above the stage side of the arena. The orchestra was fantastic and the singers were incredible. There were screens above to the left and right of the stage with the supertitles, but we did not find ourselves looking at them. It was easy to get lost in the emotion of the music and the arias.
After the opera, everyone piled out into the piazza outside the arena to enjoy a nightcap outside at the nearby restaurants. It was the perfect end to a very Italian week.
