I recently went to an opera in Vienna, which I mention just so you can be impressed by my extreme culture and breeding. Just kidding, we did go to the opera but we had obstructed view seats due to my extreme cheaposity. This meant that we only saw part of the stage — the part that cost 16 Euros per ticket.
Grand opera can be enormously expensive if you buy tickets that actually allow you to see the people on the stage, but I’ve never done this, due to my incurable belief that cheaper is better. For a couple of seasons, I had obstructed view tickets to the Los Angeles Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which were dirt cheap because you had thin stair railings in the way of your view of the stage.
Also, we were up in the upper hinterlands of the concert hall, where it’s always hot and you need auxiliary oxygen to breathe. Still, it was worth it to me to see some of the greatest operas of all time. The music was always good, and you could still see the stage, albeit from Timbuktu.
I know quite a few of you are now thinking that you’d rather eat ground glass than attend an opera, especially when you can stay home and watch reruns of “Matlock.” I like to watch TV as well, but it’s fun to eat a picnic al fresco on the plaza at the Music Center and then head inside under the grand chandeliers of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. After just visiting VIenna, where even the toilets have chandeliers, I can state unequivocally that any place with crystal chandeliers will be expensive.
We always bring our picnics from home, so our lunch is nearly free. And, with the cheapo obstructed view seats, it made for a surprisingly inexpensive day out.
And here’s the thing about opera: Don’t assume that you’ll hate it. Guys who love violent video games and TV consider this: Famous operas typically involve someone dying, stabbed, strangled, unfairly executed or committing suicide.
The first opera I ever saw was “Salome” at the gorgeous Vienna State Opera House, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Our guidebook to Vienna told us not to bother to try to get tickets because they were always sold out, but we decided to get dressed up in our hotel and go down to the opera house, just to pretend we were going. We got there, checked at the box office and discovered we could get standing room tickets for almost nothing. So, we went in and I instantly became a fan. The music. The drama. The costumes. I was entranced, and still am today. Did I mention that the title character, Salome, manages to get the prophet Jochanaan (John the Baptist) beheaded after he rejects her advances, and then she rhapsodizes over his severed head? She even kisses it on the dead lips. This all happens after one of her admirers kills himself, but before King Herod is disgusted by her behavior, and has her executed. Boring, right?
Marla Jo Fisher at the Vienna State Opera House January 2026. (Photo by Marla Jo Fisher)
Perhaps the best known opera is “Carmen” where the fiery yet faithless beauty is stabbed to death by her former lover whom she left for a famous bullfighter.
Here are a few more:
- “Madame Butterfly” by Puccini: The main character in this 19th Century story is the concubine of an English soldier in Japan. When he leaves her, breaking her heart, and then later returns with an English wife demanding custody of their son, she gives the boy up and then kills herself with her father’s knife.
- “Don Giovanni” by Mozart: Lecherous Don Giovanni, who has set out to cruelly seduce as many women as he can, kills one young woman’s father in a duel. The victim’s statue later comes to life and sets him on fire while demons drag him to Hell for his misdeeds.
- “Aida” by Verdi: Egyptian Army General Radamès loves Aida, a slave who’s actually an Ethiopian princess. After refusing to marry another woman — an Egyptian princess — Radames is sentenced to be buried alive, only to discover when he’s locked in the tomb that Aida has come there to die with him.
- “La Bohème” by Puccini: Starving artists live in Paris, and two of them fall in love. But she dies slowly and tragically of tuberculosis, which was a dreaded incurable disease before penicillin. (Other operas involve similar deaths, including “La Traviata” and “The Tales of Hoffman.”
- Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung”: In the conclusion of Wagner’s epic Ring cycle, the hero Siegfried is murdered during a hunting trip, causing heroine Brünnhilde to have a funeral pyre built. She rides her horse into it, setting Valhalla on fire, destroying the home of the gods and ending their rule.
- “Tosca” by Puccini: Tosca tries to save her lover from being executed, fatally stabs the villainous chief of police but then sees her beloved killed by a firing squad. She then throws herself from castle battlements.
I could keep going all year, but you grasp the concept. In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I have not been able to persuade my young adult children to appreciate this fine art form, but, then, they still like Kanye West, or whatever his name is now. And Curly Girl has displayed interest in actually trying one. When I took her to symphonies for youth, she would disappear with her phone to “the bathroom” and not reappear until the closing moments.
Next week: Why I love Mixed Martial Arts Ultimate Fighting. (Just kidding.)