In most tourist cities or areas there are one or two things which every
visitor tries to do while there. In Venice, it is riding on a gondola. London
has the Tower and Buckingham Palace. Florida has Disneyland.
Vienna has the opera. Even if you’re not into classical music, a visit to
the State Opera house is a must for most tourists. So I duly went along, seduced
by images of gilt-decorated interiors with people in evening dress sitting on
plush velvet cushions, and by the prices - only 50 ATS (2 British pounds or $4)
for a standing place. Yes, standing isn’t that much fun, but there would be
intervals, and it would be a very civilised way to spend an evening, I thought
to myself.
Oh dear! What a shock was in store! Firstly, you are confronted by a queue
snaking out of the opera house and into the freezing cold, so that by the time
you’ve actually bought your ticket, you’ve already been standing for about
an hour. And then you have to reserve your place in the standing area by
attaching a scarf or similar to the rail. The scene in which you are caught up
bears more resemblance to a farmyard than an opera house. Previously respectable
middle-aged men and women, dressed in suits and fur coats, suddenly turn into
pigs jostling for pole position at the feeding trough. They push you, pull you,
curse you and squeeze you into your slot as though you don’t exist.
The reserving of your place done, you can go and sit down to recover and make
sure all the vital parts are still there, perhaps over a stiff drink at the bar
(for which you will be charged more than the ticket). When it is time to go back
to your place for the start of the performance, your troubles begin anew. There
are 160 people packed into a small area with no air-conditioning. It is hot and
smelly. From time to time, somebody goes out at the back and a breath of air
disperses the bodily odour more evenly around the place. (Democratic, Viennese
life.)
Invariably, the person in front of you is tall, and so you have to crane your
neck to see what’s going on. He shuffles his head from side to side, so you
have to do so too, as does the person behind you, so that you all soon resemble
a sea anemone waving feelers around in the water.
Your legs are aching from standing for so long, and you’re not the only
one. Everybody’s legs are aching, and everybody is shuffling and coughing in
their discomfort so you can’t hear the music properly.
And then somebody farts - the silent but deadly type as ‘The Art of the Fart’
tells us it is called. You notice that the pretty girl you’ve had your eye on
in front of you has turned around with a disgusted look on her face. You want to
let her know that you are not the guilty culprit who has added flavour to the
atmosphere, but don’t know how to do so without her thinking you’re trying
to bluff. You know your chances with her are zero when she walks past you at the
interval with her nose held between carefully manicured fingers.
Somebody’s mobile phone rings at a crucial moment of the action on stage.
Does the owner switch it off, die of embarrassment and sink through the floor to
hell, as any decent person would? No; a girl picks her way through the crowd,
her phone merrily giving a rendition of Rossini’s William Tell overture, and
goes outside to answer the call. No doubt she thinks she’s being polite by not
answering the phone then and there.
But surely, I hear you say, the music makes up for all this, and makes you
forget the discomfort, the smell, the distractions. Actually, no. I’m sure
that if you were sitting comfortably on a velvet cushion surrounded by civilised
people, you would be able to appreciate the finer points of the performance.
However, from the standing area all you really notice are how unattractive the
two main singers are. He would have difficulty pulling in a room full of
sex-starved female warthogs. He is short, fat, bearded, and wears his period
costume like so many rolls of toilet paper. She, alas, looks like one of those
female warthogs. She is fat and androgynous, and makes her silk dress look like
an extra large potato sack. Only her high and strident voice reveals her sex.
And yet a glance at the programme tells you that he is a handsome warrior over
whom the court ladies swoon, while she is the object of affection for a king, a
count, and a priest, as well as the hero, and all four will commit suicide on
account of her at the end of the evening.
Perhaps I caught the opera on a bad day. Perhaps I am uncultured and
insensitive to the artistic side of life. Perhaps I made all this up, or grossly
exaggerated it. But I would advise you, regardless of anything else, that if you
are in Vienna for Valentine’s Day, and fancy a romantic evening at the Opera,
don’t try to do it cheaply. Buy seats for proper money, or else your beloved,
to whom you have extolled the virtues of such an evening, may well be an
ex-beloved by the time the curtain goes down.
