I’ve never been to the opera. In my head it was always one of those things ‘beyond my pay grade’; it’s got a bit of a ‘reputation’ in the UK of being somewhat ‘high-brow’ that perhaps it doesn’t really deserve – more the evening out of choice of high society in ballgowns and evening suits, rather than barefoot backpackers in daisy skirts and purple hair. However, on finding myself on a city break to Vienna with Jet2 Holidays, it made sense to at least have a look into it. After all, if you’re going to watch opera at all, where better to so than somewhere like Vienna or Milan. With the greatest of respect, it doesn’t have quite the same kudos to be sat watching a performance of Carmen or Rigoletto in Bradford or Minneapolis. We may have been there for Christmas Markets, but one cannot live in glühwein and bratwurst alone!
So, once we knew we were headed to Vienna, we looked at what was on offer. The Vienna State Opera, or Wiener Staatsoper, came up immediately in our search – the biggest and best opera venue in the city, and it had regular performances pretty much every day.
The opera on offer during our visit was “Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria”. Yeh, we’d never heard of it either. It’s quite an early opera, being written around 1640 by an Italian called Claudio Monteverdi. The title translates as “The return of Ulysses to his homeland”, and It’s basically the story of what happens when Ulysses (also known as Odysseus), well, comes back home after his ridiculous journey across the Aegean Sea where he gets played by the Greek Gods. So, the Odyssey, and not even the exciting bit of the Odyssey.
This leads me to an important recommendation. If you have more flexibility with your dates, and you want to go to an opera, make sure you choose an opera you’re either familiar with or a story you think you’ll enjoy. We had very little choice, and consequently ended up with one which … we stayed until the end. It was very clear a lot of the audience left at the interval. That’s not a slight on the performers; it was very well designed, very well acted, very very well sung – these are, after all, amongst the best talent in the operaverse – it was just generally felt to not be that good or interesting an opera, in terms of storyline or writing. But then you go to the opera for the experience, right?
Anyway.
How to book tickets for the opera in Vienna
We went through the Vienna State Opera’s official website – I’m sure resellers exist though.
It’s a very easy site to navigate. We just looked at the list of upcoming performances, chose our date, and it gave us clear details for that performance. It showed all available seating and pricing tiers, stretching from around €20 for restricted views all the way up to over €200 for the best seats in the house. One of the really nice things about the website is that when you choose a seat, you get to see a picture taken from it so you can get an idea of what your view will really be.
You buy the tickets through their portal and you get the choice to either pick them up from the venue, or to have e-tickets delivered by e-mail. We chose the latter, which we had to print out and take with us, but they come with QR codes so once you’re there it’s an easy scan-in.
How to get to the Vienna State Opera
The Vienna State Opera is a marvellous building on the south-west side of the city centre. It’s one of those structures that if you look at it, it’s clearly an imperial-era building (Wikipedia tells me it was constructed in 1869), and when you find out it’s the opera house you go ‘yeh, that tracks’. It looks like an opera house. Is it as impressive as the Opera in Paris? Maybe.
The Vienna State Opera Building at night.
To get there you can take a tram (several stop outside or nearby), or the U-Bahn – the nearest stop is Karlsplatz which has an entrance that brings you out pretty much directly outside the Opera House itself. It’s also not a terribly long walk from the centre of the city, down the shopping street Kartnerstraße from the cathedral.
What’s the Vienna State Opera like inside?
Once inside the building, you really get an impression of its opulence. It’s several floors tall, and each is dominated by huge and ornate ceilings, many painted with decorations and scenes from mythology, including representations and personifications of the arts themselves, like poetry and dance. Which is pretty much what you’d expect. The most ornate room is off one of the lower floors – once used as the Emperor’s private salon, it’s now a very nice place to have a glass of wine or two in the interval.
The (ceiling of the) Imperial Salon.
The staircases themselves are also very richly decorated, and are surrounded by huge archways of marble that define the corridors and balconies leading to the side rooms, toilets, refreshment areas, and of course the concert hall itself. It’s one of those places were you can just stand by one of the balcony rails and look out over the whole vista and never once get bored by the view.
The stairwell in the Opera building.
Compared to the outer reaches, the performance area itself isn’t quite as vibrant (being a much newer construction – post WW2), although it certainly isn’t lacking. It’s kind of like an eye shape, cut off at one end where the stage is. Along the two curved sides are four tiers of seating, much of it tiered like a stadium, although much plusher, and some of it in separated boxes. On the bottom level there’s also a further section of seating; between it and the stage is the orchestra pit meaning it’s quite nice to see the musicians playing as the actors sing.
What are the seats in the auditorium like?
The seats themselves are very comfortable; they didn’t feel too restrictive in terms of width, better than aircraft seating for sure, though they’re not armchairs. There was also a decent amount of legroom – as someone on the taller side, I didn’t feel uncomfortable at any point.
The auditorium as viewed from my seat. Note the left edge of the stage is less than visible.
Between each row of seats is a barrier that rises a small way above the back of the seat in front. On this barrier is an electronic touchscreen that translates, in real time, what the singer’s singing. Available languages included Italian, German, English, and, I think I’m remembering correctly, Japanese. This makes it really useful to follow what’s going on, since many operas won’t be performed in the language of the majority of the audience. For the seats in the front row, this screen is on the flat table-like section in front of the end of the balcony.
What I will say is that one slight downside with the cheaper seating is there are restricted views. As I say, you do know what you’re getting as you see a picture of the view from your seat, but just be aware that sometimes the restriction is quite large. From the seat I had, there was about a third of the stage I simply couldn’t see as it was hidden behind the curve of the balcony to my left. The actors do try to utilise the full stage (and it’s quite a big stage, both left to right and front to back) but they obviously can’t stay visible for everyone all of the time.
What are the rules and regulations in the opera?
We chose to go to an evening performance, although matinees can exist. The start time was 7pm, and the doors to the opera opened I think about 6pm. Once the performance starts, you can’t enter until the intermission, so don’t be late or they won’t let you in.
Our opera was scheduled to finish at 10.30pm; I think it was slightly earlier than that that we left, but that was before all the curtain calls had finished. In the middle there’s an intermission of about half an hour (ours was about 9pm to 9.30pm), where you can go to the toilet, go to the bar and get drinks and snacks, or just wander about the building admiring the architecture and the art. Each floor seems to have its own facilities – there’s at least two bars in the venue where wine and canapés are available, and you can pre-order both if you want to, so they’re waiting for you on arrival and saving you having to queue. Most people seemed to go to the flush old imperial salon though, and with good reason.
Laura standing in the Imperial Salon with a well-deserved glass of wine.
Each floor seems to also have a cloakroom. You can’t go into the auditorium with coats and bags, but depositing them in the cloakroom is free – they just give you a ticket which you have to hand back on collection. You’re also not allowed to take photos or videos during the performance itself, although it’s fine before the start, in the intermission, and during the curtain call.
You may be surprised to know the dress code listed at the Vienna State Opera is much more relaxed than you might imagine. They specifically advise against flip-flops, crop-tops-as-outerwear, minishorts, and hats (the latter for obvious practical reasons rather than culturally-respectful ones), but otherwise, they’re likely to accept most things, but just don’t push it. Obviously though it’s the opera in Vienna so the majority of people do make some kind of effort. Suits and long black dresses were pretty common.
Even I was wearing closed shoes. Granted they were cheap things from my local Tesco, but they looked the part.
Would I go to the opera again?
Yes, I would. It was much easier to follow than I’d feared, and much more accessible. I will reiterate though the following points:
- Go to a venue with a reputation for good performances. It doesn’t have to be Vienna, but if it’s your first time, you’ll want to see it done properly, so a school production probably won’t cut it.
- Go to a venue that’s set up for opera. The real-time translation is a game-changer, and not every venue will have such capabilities. You don’t want to be stuck for three hours watching something you don’t understand.
- Make sure it’s a story you’ll enjoy. Even if you do end up reading the translation more than watching the performance, if it’s a story you know, or which is easy to follow, that makes a lot of difference, otherwise it can be as pretty and spectacular as anything, but you’ll still get bored, and that’s a shame.
This post contains an affiliate link. Just so’s you know.