Every summer, Verona has an opera season, staging operas on a huge stage in the huge first-century Roman arena that dominates the city's historic center.
On our previous visit to Verona we fell in love with the city, but we hadn't yet gotten over my long-time aversion to any operas but Mozart's, and my wife wasn't even sure of his. In the few years since, we attended and listened to more, and this time we decided the combination of music and the spectacular venue were for us.
We made our plans months in advance: we would be in Verona in August; we found an apartment near Piazza Bra, where the arena is located, we chose Bizet's Carmen as our opera, and ordered tickets. On the day of, we even bought seat cushions to take along.
Climbing up to the seats in the stands
And then the weather turned rainy, actually stormy, and threw a monkey wrench into everything. Since the arena is an outdoor venue, rain is a major issue; the orchestra's instruments must be protected; the show can't go on until the rain stops.
And since management is not obliged to refund or exchange tickets once the performance completes Act I, the opera is almost never canceled. Patrons sit in the rain or huddle under the stands, waiting. I've never seen so many ponchos and umbrellas in so many colors in one place before.
Five times the rain stopped, five times teams of stage workers rushed out to dry the music stands and to sweep pools of water off the stage and down the ramps, five times orchestra members started filing in, and five times a performer in costume came to the edge of the stage with a large drum and beat a pattern to alert the house that the performance would begin.
And then the rain returned, as if it were the next act. After a bit over two hours (the performance was scheduled to start at 8:45), we gave up, and decided to check in the morning if the management had, too. The storm got worse, and they did, and in the morning, I was able to go out (first to the address listed on their website, and then to the correct address) and exchange the tickets for two days later.
On Tuesday night, the weather was perfect, and we were in our seats with plenty of time. And, at only a few minutes late, the now-familiar drummer appeared on stage and banged it. Musicians began filing into the orchestra enclosure just at the foot of the stage. And then came the announcement: Due to a union issue, there would be a one-hour delay in the performance.
We had no idea what the workers' issue was, but on principle our sympathies were with them, and we settled down to wait. Precisely one hour later, the ritual began again, but this time it continued, with the musicians in place and the stage crew moving and removing pieces of stage furniture, including a very realistic looking (at a distance) dead bull.
And the opera began. At last.
And it began with a peculiar Verona tradition, one that would be unthinkable in an indoor venue. As you enter, you're handed a small plastic bag containing a small (birthday-cake-sized) candle with a folding cardboard holder. As a reminder of early days when only candles and lanterns were available to illuminate the arena, they're lit and held up until they burn down. Or until you get tired of holding yours. DrFumblefinger, Professor Abe and George G all recognized the lit-up scene in this week's One-Clue Mystery puzzle.
As mentioned, we're newcomers to opera, and have been amazed at how well small spaces on stage have been able to represent large plazas, fields, castles and more. In Verona, that took on a whole new dimension.
The arena is huge; it could seat 30,000, but these days it's limited to 15,000. The floor of the arena is large enough for a football or soccer field. The stage is longer and deeper than a basketball court. The sets are large enough to allow real crowds in crowd scenes, and for trucks and cars to drive around on the stage. Did I mention that in this staging, Carmen is set in the 1920s?
The props are correspondingly huge, and are stored outside the arena, on the edge of Piazza Bra, center of Verona's street life. They're lifted in as needed with a construction crane stationed nearby. A sample here, more next week.
For an open-air setting that huge, you might imagine that the sound would be almost secondary to the spectacle, and that it would either sound artificial if it were audible, or hard to hear at all if it were not amplified. And, it turns out, until 2010, there was no amplification and constant complaints that only a few areas got good sound. But we found the sound was wonderful, and we'll leave the gurus who did it to explain how.
Opera in the arena has a 100+ year history, starting with an over-the-top production of Verdi's Aida in 1913; it was not only the first serious outdoor opera production, it was arguably the first with three-dimensional structures instead of painted drops.
In its early years, the opera season put on only one production a year, usually chosen in part for how well it could be 'blown-up' to fit the arena's huge space. Carmen was the 1914 choice. When performances resumed after World War I, the season began expanding to more productions, with Aida the most frequent. In the 1940s and 1950s, Maria Callas was a frequent star; in the 1954 version of Aida, she co-starred with live elephants.
Over the years, numbers of productions for the huge space were designed by movie directors, including Roberto Rosselini and Franco Zeffirelli.
In the end, we had to leave early; it was after midnight and we had a morning train to Bolzano. But yes, it was worth the wait, and yes, we'd do it again. If the weather holds...
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