"Opera and Cycling in Dresden" Top 5 Page for this destination Dresden by Nemorino

Dresden Travel Guide: 1,205 reviews and 3,542 photos

The Semper Opera House in Dresden - Dresden
The Semper Opera House in Dresden

Performances at the Semper Opera House in Dresden are usually sold out weeks or months in advance. When this happens you will notice because they remove the ticket icon from that performance on their website www.semperoper.de.

Don't give up too quickly though, because a night at the opera in Dresden is a great experience. The interior decoration of the opera house is beautiful, the acoustics are outstanding, the orchestra is good and with any luck you will also get to see and hear some fine singers.

Semper Opera House in Dresden - Dresden

Semper Opera House in Dresden

My first trip to Dresden was in January 1998. The performance of Mozart's opera Cosi fan tutte was sold out, so I phoned the hotel I was booked into and asked if they couldn't get tickets for me anyway. They said they would see what they could do, and sure enough, they had two tickets for me (at face value, with no markup) when I arrived.

Unfortunately my colleague from the publishing house got sick that afternoon and couldn't come to the opera. So I took her ticket along and sold it a few minutes before show time to a Korean student who was waiting outside the opera house for someone like me to come along.

Semper Opera House in Dresden - Dresden

Semper Opera House in Dresden


My second visit was in September 2004. Verdi's opera Don Carlo (the four-act Italian version) was sold out, so I called the opera house at 03 51 / 4 91 17 05 and after the usual waiting in the loop was connected to a nice woman who asked me how many tickets I needed. I said one, and she said in that case yes. One ticket had just been returned (this can happen when a subscriber swaps dates, as I sometimes have to do in Frankfurt), so I took it and paid by credit card.

So I got to see two operas in Dresden after all, which I was really happy about, and they were fine except that the staging seemed a bit pale compared to what I am used to at other German opera houses. But to be fair I should explain that both Cosi fan tutte and Don Carlo are operas I dearly love and have often seen in elsewhere. And at an opera house like Dresden (or Vienna, for instance) with a large percentage of tourists in the audience you can't really expect a lot of innovative staging, because that isn't what their audience wants.


In September 2008 I was sent to Dresden once again to do a teachers' workshop, and I took the opportunity to go to the opera with two VirtualTourist members, Kathrin_E (Kathrin) and german_eagle (Ingo).

Ingo has posted an album with a nice photo of the three of us in the lobby of the Semper Opera.

I have now added ten new tips (and various updates) to my Dresden page. The new tips are at the beginning of their respective categories: one new Hotel tip, two new Things to Do tips, two new Off the Beaten Path tips, one new Restaurant tip and four new Transportation tips.


In 2004 the Elbe Valley in Dresden was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in the category of a cultural landscape.

A mere five years later, in 2009, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee decided to remove the Elbe Valley from the World Heritage List due to the building of a four-lane bridge in the heart of the cultural landscape, which meant that the area failed to keep its "outstanding universal value as inscribed."

According to UNESCO's website Dresden is only the second property ever to have been removed from the World Heritage List. The first was Oman's Arabian Oryx Sanctuary, which was delisted in 2007.

  • Last visit to Dresden: Sep 2008
  • Intro Updated May 26, 2012
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Reviews (34)

1. A musician cycling in Dresden - Dresden Increased bicycle use in Dresden Transportation (4)

According to the city administration, bicycle usage in Dresden for journeys to and from work increased by 40 % from 2002... more travel advice

1. Cyclist going past the Semper Opera House - Dresden Cycling in Dresden Transportation (4)

Of course most cyclists in Dresden are not dependent on bike-sharing systems, because they have their own bikes. Like... more travel advice

1. Close-up of a NextBike - Dresden NextBike Transportation (4)

NextBike is a private bicycle sharing system that is quite similar to DB Call-a-Bike except that it is partially paid... more travel advice

1. CallBikes at the Dresden main station - Dresden DB Call-a-Bike Transportation (4)

The German Railway System DB has recently expanded its Call-a-Bike program (which I described in detail in a tip on my... more travel advice

Comments (61)

  • Reply
    balhannah's Profile Photo
    Feb 2, 2013 at 3:07 PM

    A great virtual tour Don! Dresden sounds a lovely city to look around.

  • xaver's Profile Photo
    Nov 6, 2012 at 11:00 AM

    nice tour of this city which any student remembers only for the bombings

  • Reply
    Regina1965's Profile Photo
    Jul 13, 2012 at 5:21 PM

    Yes, you are right, even a VirtualTourist member can go without the internet for a couple of days. I just came back from the highlands of Iceland and didn´t go on-line for a couple of days - it was refreshing ;) A great page on Dresden, thanks for the virtual tour, it makes me sad thinking about what happened there during WW2.

  • Reply
    MalenaN's Profile Photo
    Jun 1, 2012 at 1:08 AM

    Going to the opera, the pub and to brunch sounds to be nice activities for a VT-meeting, but to wait an hour for the brunch is absolutly too much. The stage curtain at the opera house looks beautiful.

  • Reply
    CatherineReichardt's Profile Photo
    Apr 2, 2012 at 5:00 AM

    Hi Don
    As ever, thanks for the 'virtual tour'! This is one of the corners of Germany that I have yet to explore, so I was curious to discover a little more about its history.
    Regards
    Cathy

  • Reply
    XenoHumph's Profile Photo
    Apr 21, 2011 at 11:48 AM

    Great page! Ah!! GDR architecture!!

  • Reply
    kris-t's Profile Photo
    Jan 14, 2011 at 5:03 PM

    Yep... they definitely did not stand on ceremony with Cromwell... Great Dresden page! Love Kurt Vonnegut too.

  • Reply
    ATLC's Profile Photo
    Sep 25, 2010 at 4:10 AM

    Thanks for some useful tips (added to my Trip Planner) and interesting insights into life before and after Die Wende.

  • Reply
    icunme's Profile Photo
    Sep 8, 2009 at 1:23 PM

    Fantastic tour of Sempler - inside and out. Great photos/detail - a joy! All I knew of Dresden was the famous china - now made in Meissen.

  • Reply
    calcaf38's Profile Photo
    Sep 6, 2009 at 6:13 AM

    Amazing page: everything is so clean and well agencé, yet the most savage history lurks closely. I vote for keeping at least one ruined hulk from the firestorm, and one GDR eyesore around. It makes the scope of the reconstruction more significant.

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