What I Did On My Holidays – Verona/Aida
First thing to be said about my trip to Verona is this – myself and boyfriend did very much not go and stand under Juliet’s balcony. Because let’s face it, the idea is kinda silly. What we did manage to do was walk for 3 and a half hours in search of a place to stay before ending up back where we’d started. A word of warning for all potential travellers to Italy – if you’re thinking of going down the Bed and Breakfast route (which we were!) charge your phone and make sure you’ve got credit first.
Verona is a city – or maybe a town, I don’t really know how you make the judgment – in Northern Italy with a very pretty old heart and a Roman Arena bang smack in the centre just to cap it all off. Like most places we visited in our trip through the area, finding a grocers was one of the toughest challenges we had, and every waiter at every restaurant/gelateria recognised us for English before we’d even opened our mouths to speak. The old town is caught in a loop defined by a fast flowing river, across which are a number of bridges, including one that was part of a castle, which was quite exciting. A small cathedral lies to the north, replete with golden icons and, in a fashion that slightly confused me, marble statues of saints wearing what looked like triangular halos. There are symptoms of changing ownership throughout Verona’s history, built into its streets; a church bearing the crest of arms of the Austrians in a square with the book-holding, open-jawed lion of St. Mark, looking down onto a fashion emporium selling Milanese leather shoes with a poster in its window advertising Verdi sung in a Roman amphitheatre.
To be honest, my boyfriend and I had kinda missed the minor detail of there being a Roman arena which was still in-tact enough to be used to house an opera festival capable of sitting around 20,000 people until we were actually confronted with the fact. Despite the fact that neither he nor I are what you’d really call opera buffs – in fact, this was the second opera I’ve ever seen in my life, and I now feel a bit opera-d out – we figured that for the price of a cheap seat on a stone step, it’d be an experience worth having.
Through a coincidence of timing, the opera we ended up seeing was Aida. The ticket said it started at 9 p.m., which surprised us, and we told ourselves that we could file in about 8 p.m. and get a ‘good seat’, since being just on stone steps, our place was unassigned.
Oh my we were a bit out of our depth…
Shuffling in at 8.15, the stone steps of the Roman arena, and I kid you not when I say Roman arena, a great giant stone splat on the landscape where once tens of thousands cheered for blood-splattered gladiators – we found the terraces already heaving with people wedged in buttock to buttock, speaking every language within a 200 mile radius. The arena changes the opera it’s performing every night, so dozens of tech crew were swarming over the stage until right up to the word go, raising the largest set I have ever seen in my life while lighting crew focused some seriously punchy lamps to shine down over the heads of an audience packed in their thousands onto a stage that dwarved anyone on it.
Announcements were in three languages – the German announcement was nothing short of hillarious, as I have never heard such a sultry voice wrapping itself around the words – and there were four intervals throughout the show for the stage to be reset.
Then the show began.
I have no idea what Aida is about. I mean, I got the basic gist, but right now I still couldn’t give you a full account without consulting a book. But I have never, in all my life, seen such a spectacular show. Not necessarily a very good one, in that much of my time was spent worrying about the state of my bottom and wondering whether it really was 1 a.m. and they were still going, but utterly, utterly spectacular. At the start of the show, the audience were invited to light little candles as a tradition of the arena, and as the sun went down, hundreds, quite possibly thousands of these little flames were struck in the audience as if at a cathedral. Then over 60 flame torch-bearing Egyptian soldiers entered and spread themselves around the venue as the performance began.
The piece that I can only guess was the half-way closer was the ultimate in ridiculousness. It featured continual processions containing no fewer than…
60 Egyptian palace guards.
30 Ballet dancing soldiers.
20 scantily clad ballet dancing slave girls.
20 Captured slaves.
30 High priests.
30 Scribes and general officials.
20 Nubian slave children, aged 3-6.
4 Horses.
Like I said, I have no idea what actually happened. For the truly nerdy, I also have this warning; if you’re using 6 discharge follow spots to light the stage, for please be sure that 1 of them isn’t more punchy than its neighbours. Nerdy moment over. I should also add that even if opera wasn’t my thing, the conductor was worth every penny we paid for the ticket, an entire dramatic/acrobatic performance in his own right…
But I can honestly say, I have never, in all my life, sat through anything quite as ridiculously, astoundingly, absurdly over the top as Aida at the Verona Arena.
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