Naschmarkt is a large outdoor mornings-only market touted as being extremely crowded with a large variety of products. We were excited to visit, and since Belvedere Palace opens at 10AM, we wanted to get to Naschmarkt before Belvedere opened. A standing-only brew cafe... cute tables!
Naschmarkt was pretty disappointing, as many merchants were selling the same things and we didn't find anything we wanted to buy. But there were more Billas there, so we did go to those ~__^ On our quest for ice wine in Vienna, we finally learned that most ice wines are exported because it is incredibly hard to make and only small batches are made at a time. So the Austrians ship most of it to the United States (where all the money's at!) and charge hefty prices for ice wine in the States. They are incredibly strict on the procedure of how icewine is made, so if it doesn't meet those standards, it cannot be named "Eiswein." Icewine is made from pressed frozen grapes. "Trocken" means "dry" and Trockenbeerenauslese is NOT an icewine (which I always thought was!), although it still is an extremely sweet and extremely expensive dessert wine. The Trockenbeerenauslese must be made from grapes affected by Botrytis (noble rot), which may or may not come each winter. Global warming has made both icewine and Botrytis quite hard to achieve naturally in recent years, which is why these wines are made in such small batches. One Californian wine company, Bonny Doon, sells icewine by simply dumping grapes in commercial freezers, then pressing the juice from that! You can bet international boards (esp. Germany and Austria) are criticizing that!
Belvedere Palace is split up into Lower and Upper Belvedere. We had bought a combo ticket online for 13.5 euros each, which allows access to both the Belvederes, the Orangerie and Palace Stables over a two-day window frame. We started with Lower Belvedere today, and learned that Belvedere was built by Prince Eugene of Savoy. His grandmother Marie de Bourbon, Countess de Soissons, raised him in the French court after his mother fled to Brussels on accusations of killing her husband and trying to kill King Louis XIV (they were purported to have been lovers). His grandmother raised him for a life of church, but when he rejected that path, his grandmother kicked him out of her home, penniless. King Louis XIV refused to help him, and so Eugene fled to Austria, where a besieged Emperor Leopold was trying to fend of Turkish advances. When Leopold granted Eugene a position in his army, he could not have known that this boy would become one of the greatest military heroes of all time. With the fortune he amassed, he built several palaces, was devoted to arts and science, and obsessed with exotic animals and plants. His orangerie and library were quite famous in his time.
We went to Kartnerstrasse for lunch, a huge pedestrian-only street that is probably double the size of The Grove in LA.
We go there every day, just because it's so fun to walk around (in that sense, we're becoming very European ~__^). There are stands selling Wienerschnitzels, Pizza, and Kebabs. Pizza and pasta are really big in Austria, as are Turkish food... Venice was once part of the Austrian Empire, as was Hungary and Turkey. We bought a kebab panini~ yum!:
The Billa is located inside a posh mall, and it looks pretty posh itself:
The Opera House conducts tours daily, in various languages. We caught the 2pm tour, where we learned that half the museum was bombed in WWII, so the other half took 10 years to rebuild after the war (it's pretty evident which half is which based on the interior design).
The original opera house was designed in the 1860's by 2 architects, but after being severely criticized, one (Eduard van der Nüll) committed suicide and the other (August Sicard von Sicardsburg) died shortly afterward. Neither saw the completion of the opera house. There are 1000 employees working at the Opera House, around 200-300 work backstage. Since the show is different every night, all the scenery have to be changed every single day. There are 99 different curtain drops on the stage! The scenery storage warehouse is actually near our apartment in Belvedere, and there are white trucks that transport what they need for the day throughout the day, as it is impossible to store everything at the Opera House. We are amazed that they can change the show every single night (it rotates every 3-4 nights)! It is a rep group, so the actors are the same but need to assume multiple roles during any one season for all the different shows they put on. They have been preserving costumes since 1945, and the costumes now number 180,000!!! If hanged one next to another in a single file line, it would be 9 km long! The costume designers work in a building across the street, and bring the costumes in daily via an underground passage into the Opera House.
We also got to see the most expensive room in the Opera House, which used to be Emperor Franz Josef's private intermission room. Today it costs 500 euro to rent out the room (and only the room! catering and cleaning are not included!) just for a 15 minute intermission!
The Opera Museum gives a background of the history of the Opera House, as well as the temperamental conductors and directors who have worked here. It seems they were always feuding with one another, and no one director has retained position very long.
When we got outside around 4pm, we noticed that the standing line area already had people waiting outside! The standing line is where you buy standing only tickets for the opera, the day of. They are 3-4 euros apiece, depending on where you want to stand.
There are booths high up in the Opera House that are 3 euros, or you can stand right smack in the middle of the auditorium for 4 euros. Hell yea! The ticket booth doesn't actually open until 80 minutes before the start of the show, but by the time 5:40pm rolled around (the opera starts at 7pm), the line was very very long. We had met a Canadian couple earlier in the day that assured us nobody would want to go to La Traviata because "the Viennese are sick of it, as it is played too many times" and that 80 minutes beforehand is ok. Yeah right! So we stood there waiting from 4:10pm to 5:40pm, when you go up to the ticket booth one by one to buy your ticket (they only allow 1 ticket per person to prevent scalping). You then follow the corridor down into the opera, where you line up by pairs in front of the appropriate entry way door. At 6:30pm, they lead you two-by-two into the pit, where everyone immediately rushes to stand by a viewing spot. After getting a spot, each person is told to tie a scarf (or other object) on the black pole in front of him/herself to mark his/her spot:
We were the 2nd couple in line for the pit immediately across the stage the opera, so we got front row standing spots! They were awesome! Unobstructed view of the stage and dead center!
There are subtitle screens in front of each person, regardless of if you are standing or sitting:
The opera began at 7pm with the orchestra first playing a beautiful piece, then the curtains drawing up to reveal a party scene.
La Traviata is based on a story written by Alexander Dumas' son, also named Alexander Dumas. Alberto, a proper gentleman, who falls in love with Violetta, a courtesan who has consumption. She initially rejects his love because she doesn't think she can fall in love, but his words are so beauteous that she ends up falling madly for him. He leaves his family for her as his father disapproves. They live in happiness until his father comes one day to see Violetta and pleads for her to leave him, as his daughter has fallen in love with a man who refuses to marry her unless Alberto comes back to the family. Violetta is heartbroken but agrees to break off because she loves Alberto and wants his family to be reunited. She associates herself with the Baron, Alberto's main competitor for her affections when they were both wooing her. Alberto feels betrayed and scorns her publicly at a ball. She pleads him to understand and his father, taking pity on Violetta's plight, denounces his son for scorning her. Alberto finally understands why Violetta did what she did, and is so full of shame he cannot show his face to her. As Violetta lays on her deathbed, she mourns at having found true love but having it taken away from her. Alberto comes in at her darkest hour and pleads for forgiveness. They make up and Violetta, full of joy, wants to go out and celebrate, only to collapse and die.
The music and singing were amazing and I cried during most of it! By the end of the night, we had stood 6 hours, but La Traviata was completely worth it, and you cannot even tell that you've been standing that long! I am so mad at myself that we didn't go to the opera EVERY night we were here! We got lucky because Macbeth was supposed to have played instead of La Traviata (which wasn't scheduled at all anywhere during the season), but was replaced recently due to the high popularity of La Traviata, and it just happened to be our last night there!
I wish I were there too!
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