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Albergo Torcolo in Verona was great. The receptionist was super-nice, cheery and spoke English. We did a walking tour of the city, but our maps were truly awful (sure they were. Guess who wrote this...), so it took Eric quite some time to sort everything out and get us back to the hotel (fortunately, we didn't get lost, although those bad maps can be quite a nuisance).
When we returned to the hotel after dinner, the receptionist looked shocked that we were not going to the opera that night. "Everyone is here for the opera," she said. We would be the only guests in the entire hotel not going, she added. "People come from around the world to see the opera here," she said. So we went.
The wonderful thing about Italy is that opera is not just for the upper class. A very proletarian crowd gathered outside in the old Roman amphitheater for "Aida." The rain was falling and the beer was flowing throughout a 45-minute rain delay. Periodically, the crowd grew antsy, and there would be a wave of kicking, stomping and clapping. When the rain let up, a great cheer filled the air. When the groundskeepers came out, another great cheer went up, accompanied by more clapping, whistling and stomping. It was at this point that they uncovered the expensive seats for the opera regulars. The rest of us bleacher-folk sat and waited it out in the rain, which only made it better. We came to see opera, and dammit, we were going to see opera. The rest of the mob felt the same.
Finally, sometime around 10:00 p.m., the opera started, and it turned out that the whole thing was in Italian. As far as we could tell, there were two women, and one of them was upset because the other always got to wear shinier clothes, but then the other was upset because the other (the one with the less shinier clothes) always got the spotlight, while she was only allowed red and blue second-hand lighting. Then 200 people with shields, dressed like Egyptian priests, came out and sang a prayer to the god of sequins while four people painted black danced tribal dances and did Rolling Stones pantomimes on their tambourines. One of them may have actually been Mick Jagger; we couldn't tell since, like the rest of the proletarians, were sitting on a stone bench somewhere near Spain.
Around 11:30, there was a big finale, and all the people and priests and other things that vaguely resembled six-foot chipmunks came out on stage and sang a big campfire song. When they finished, the crowd went nuts and everyone clapped and stomped and shouted "bravo!" We got up to leave, and a voice came on and said the intermission would last approximately 20 minutes. We sat through that, but then there was a big cloudburst, and we got to watch the musicians run for cover. Which is why they're not track stars - but running with a cello isn't easy. We then left. As we walked away, we could hear the crowd stamping and hollering again.
It turns out the opera was something about a war in ancient Egypt. Who knew?
