Down Under in Lennox Head, 2007: OPERA!!!!

3/30

We woke up early and walked down to the harbor to the Opera House to see about tickets. None of “the 7” were really interested in going to an opera but it turned out my roommates were. We talked to the guy at the box office and he told us that if we came back at 6:30 for a 7:30 show we could get “student rush tickets” which were for seats that hadn’t been sold yet.

We got a muffin from a pierside restaurant and met up with Ashley and her mom. We all went to the botanical gardens and then split our separate ways. We went souvenir shopping some more and then walked back to the hostel to get ready for the night.

The girls had heard that the new rooms they had been moved to were inhabited with bed bugs, and we still hadn’t all been put in a room together so they were pretty upset. We decided to cancel our reservation for Saturday night and find somewhere else to stay.

Tracy, Angie and I got pretty and went down the Opera House. They were trying to get tickets for the sold out “Macbeth” and I met up with the roomies. We ended up in the 4^th row splitting the center. They were $220 tickets for the Italian opera “Alcina” and we got them for $50!!

The Opera was SO amazing. First of all, if you didn’t know… there are three theatres inside the opera house, the largest is the concert hall and then the opera theatre is one of the smaller ones.

It seats 1,050…so it is much smaller and more intimate than I had expected. The stage was smaller than my high school stage, both in depth and width. It was so cozy and we could see the conductor and orchestra in the pit and everything in full detail on the stage. The sets were amazing and of course the singing was spectacular. It made me miss Ball State School of Music. I just wanted to be up on stage. They were spectacular performers. We didn’t look at the subtitles or “surtitles” much because the story line was so evident. Their gestures and facial expressions were phenomenal, and there was more dancing than previous operas I attended.

It was over four hours in length, but that included two 20-minute intermissions. Because it was so amazing—it didn’t seem long at all. I absolutely adored it.

None of us had eaten dinner so we stopped at McDonalds and tried to catch a taxi home. Some how four young prettied-up women can’t get a taxi to stop at midnight in downtown Sydney on a Friday night, that right is reserved for grungy looking men. Go figure. We walked home.

Tracy was waiting to let me in the hostel because she thought I didn’t have a key. She had fallen asleep reading a book on the stairs, I felt bad because she wanted to go to bed early and I did have a key. That night Craig got in, so there were 5 in our small bunk bed room.

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