Semperoper - barber of seville, Jan 26

We decided to take up a performance of the Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia) at the Semperoper. We went during a weekday and purchased our tickets right before the show to get reduced prices and better seats for the kids. I had priced this out a few times and if we bought the tickets in advance (without student discount) they would have cost ~175 Euro (over $250) and by waiting until the day of; we got them for 78 Euro (~$115) on the Parquet, which is a lot more reasonable. I was able to talk to someone at the ticket office and they tipped me on to the fact that i could get better seats (with reduced prices for the kids) if i waited until right before the performance. This did however take me a few stops at the ticket office to fully understand, my German is not so good and finally was able to ask the right questions.

The Opera house had an aura of distinction, sophistication, and privilege as we entered the building. We rented opera glasses for Noah and all to share. During intermission we had pretzels and champagne; all in all we had a real special night as we were treated to the orchestra, opera singers, and the beautify setting/costumes/performance. Noah was a little restless at parts as the performance went for 2 hours (he is only 12 years old), with a short intermission.

In the Semper Oper, all ready to go.
Another shot, the inside lobby areas are really beautiful:

Shot of the seating area, you can see Melissa, David, and Noah at the bottom right:

Cool clock above the curtain, it only shows 5 minute intervals and for the hour it uses roman letters. In Europe and Germany they really have special clocks:

They don't allow pictures during the performances although on the Semper Oper web site they have a really good video of the Opera (Rosina, the lead woman role, was a different singer in our performance then the one shown in this video) that will give you a good flavor of the performance:

http://www.theater-tv.com/dresdenvideo.php?video=barbier

The nice thing about watching an Italian Opera in Germany is they provide translations above the stage, however the translations are in German so it was a bit difficult to follow.