I Love Sydney #2

I am not sure whether I should attribute this excellence to the whole city of Sydney, but it came from officialdom at the Opera House, so a case could be made.

When I went to the box office to claim the ticket I had ordered online to see Magic Flute, the cashier said, "Oh dear", and went to consult the manager. It seems that I had ordered a ticket for January 25 instead of February 25. And the February 25 performance, a weekend matinee, was sold out.

The clerk managed to find me a seat with an obstructed view. "But I can still hear everything, right?" I asked anxiously. "Oh yes," she reassured me, "and at the intermission, you should find the theater manager and see if someone failed to claim a ticket, maybe we can upgrade you then. Oh wait, there she is."

So I repeated my sorrowful tale, and the manager was sympathetic but momentarily unhelpful, and I toddled off with my obstructed view ticket and hope in my heart. It was half an hour until the theater opened, so I followed an usher's suggestion and climbed four or five flights of stairs (the Sydney Opera House assumes one is not physically challenged -- maybe all Aussie opera lovers warm up by climbing the Harbour Bridge before breakfast every day) to find a pre-show lecture. Along with a dozen or so fellow audience members, I sprawled on the red-carpeted staircase and listened to the talk while admiring the sailboats moving past the Opera House on the sun-dappled Harbour.

After the lecture, I climbed back down to the entry to my occluded seat, but the usher had a handwritten sticky note. "There's been a double booking," she said, "You'll have to climb up this stairway, you're now in B14." "How much more occluded can I get?" I wondered as I followed the usher's directions.

B14, it turned out, was in the center of the second row of the balcony, a seat that probably cost more than twice what I paid and gave me a full, perfect view of the brilliant, colorful, enchanting performance. (Note to Nanette : the bass was nowhere near Rene Pape, the Queen of the Night sang quite well, though she tended to squeak a bit on the very highest notes of her arias, Pamino was actually better than the Met's, and Papageno did a good job, though without the heart-stopping sexiness of Nathan Gunn. The pre-show lecture explained that the guy who played Papageno in the very first production had a lot of input to Mozart as he was writing it, so that part gets a lot of audience-pleasing stuff.)

I have no idea why I ended up in the perfect seat. But I still get giddy remembering that afternoon at the Sydney Opera House seeing that glorious production. As happy as I look in the attached picture, taken for me by two ladies from Boston with British accents before I entered the Opera House, I was even happier afterwards walking back to the shuttle to the ship.

Note to Lizz : I can't say anything about the acoustics in the concert hall because (a) I was in the perfect seat where everything was guaranteed to sound good, and (b) I know nothing about acoustics. Love, Mom.