Friday night, for the first time in my life, I visited an opera house and saw a live classical concert. In England to do that would be really expensive, and even here it is 120,000, 150,000 or 200,000 Dong ($8-13). When we got to the box office there was a tout trying to sell D200,000 tickets for D100,000, but we were a bit apprehensive, thinking they might be fakes. We were just about to buy proper tickets when a guy comes up and says he has two free tickets, do we want them?! Not only that but it doesn't matter which tickets you buy you can sit wherever you like (the same guy told us in the break) once the concert has started. So we watched the first half from our proper seats up in the stalls and the second half from down in the expensive seats!
The Beautiful Hanoi Opera House was the location. The Vietnam Symphony Orchestra were the band. Strauss, Dvorak and Beethoven were the composers:
* R. Strauss - Symphonic Poem "Don Juan" Op.20
* A. Dvorak - Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, B minor, Op. 104
* L.V. Beethoven - Symphony No5, C minor, Op.67
It is fantastic to see an orchestra working so well together and producing such sweet music. I will definitely return, even if I have to pay next time.
I took a couple of (awful) pics but thought I would include them for posterity. Not sure quite what happened to the one of the stairs!
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