Buenos Aires Opera House

The Teatro Colón is ranked the third best opera house in the world and is acoustically considered to be among the finest concert venues in the world. 

The theatre is a horseshoe-shaped room that feels very inviting to share.

 And there are grand rooms before entering the theatre with busts over entrances of major composers, like Mozart.

The construction was a 20-year process, opening in 1908, with all materials shipped over from Europe (floor tiles from England, materials for curtains from France, marble from Italy). There is a distinct European flair especially with the French Room looking remarkably like Versailles's Hall of Mirrors. 

We went to see Mozart's Don Giovanni. The story is that of a womanizer who beds thousands of women: young, old, big, small. The opera shows his adulterous ways until he is caught up with what appears to be his eventual debaucherous death. The storyline is that even after 200 years, if you mess around, there'll be hell to pay (ouch!)

How did it go? This may be a surprise to some of you (certainly for me)- do you know that operas are in Italian? All of it... 3 1/2 hours. The singers do a lot of warbling up and down octaves all the time and they repeat themselves a lot which meant the orchestra is repeating their stuff over and over like forever. And for the debaucherous 3 1/2 hours, there wasn't one bit of clothing that was removed.

To be fair, there was a teleprompter showing Spanish and English while Italian was sung. But really- even Jesus Christ Superstar wasn't that long!