| Page Views: 5,693 Last Visit to Dresden: September, 2008 | Opera and Cycling in Dresden by Nemorino - last update: Dec 16, 2008 |
| 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 |
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 |
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. |
> Add to your Custom Travel Guide [What's This?]
Nemorino's Dresden Travel Tips
 Comments for Nemorino about Dresden | | | | |
icunme Tue Sep 8, 2009 21:23 UTC
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. | calcaf38 Sun Sep 6, 2009 14:13 UTC
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. | alancollins Fri Aug 28, 2009 18:23 UTC
I spent a Sunday afternoon in Dresden during my first trip to Berlin. I never use to take much notice then of what places to visit, though I do remember the Semper Opera House and the Church of our Lady. Time to dust off the photos. | pg12359 Fri May 8, 2009 13:23 UTC
Saw a concert on television from inside the Frauenkirche. Beautiful. Can't wait to go there and see it myself. |
|
|
email me
add as friend
