National Opera House

On Sunday, in Vienna, we decided to do a tour of the Opera House. It was so worth it! It was such a beautiful building and our tour guide did such a great job telling stories about the building. We really enjoyed it - and not just because it was warm and dry :)

Entertaining ourselves waiting for the tour to start :)

The main stage. They were set up for that evening's show but I don't remember what it was. 

our tour guide making us smarter by the minute

The orchestra pit. We were surprised at how big it was! and that the Vienna Philharmonic is also the "house" orchestra for all performances. 

Backstage - bigger than main stage and super tall. This didn't count all the extra storage buildings that they have off site that hold everything for their yearly shows. 

Interestingly, at least to me, was that this Opera House was built to look like a smaller version of the main opera house in Paris. The Emperor was so disappointed in it that he considered the place a disgrace from the very beginning. The architects were embarrassed and shamed for the rest of their lives - which I don't think was much longer after the building of it. and I mean, who wouldn't be embarrassed??? Obviously this place is lacking ;)   

The tapestries were all made to represent different scenes from Mozart's Magic Flute opera. 

This was the Emperor's hang out room for during the shows that he went to see. It was beautiful!

Another hangout/intermission room decorated by lots of different composer's heads. She had a contest asking if we could figure out what operas they had composed and Chris knew them all :)

This was a picture of some ball they do every year that raises most of the money to keep the Opera House open. 

The main hall. It was so nice!  With lots of boxes for people to sit in and, of course, the best seats in the house were the Emporer's private box. 

Once we finished the tour, our tickets also got us into the Museum that held lots more stuff and info from the Opera House. So, we made our way over to it to check it out. Mostly because we wanted to see what it had looked like before it was bombed in World War 2 and we were told there were pictures of it in the Museum. While we didn't find any great pictures of that, we did find our incredible ballet skills while looking at the exhibits :)

and Chris made sure that he had gotten lots of good pictures to document everything :)