Fidelio
Teatro Real, Madrid
For all its glories, Madrid is not a city that one associates with great opera performances, as one does Barcelona. Perhaps it’s not surprising: it’s only 11 years since the new Teatro Real opened, after delays on a British scale. The previous house had sunk in 1925, and the new one encountered every kind of problem before it opened in 1997. The wait was worthwhile. I was shown over it by the extremely helpful press lady, and was stunned by its sophistication, size, the number and quality of its facilities, and the attractiveness both of the exterior and the interior — not to mention being impressed and impoverished by the opera shop, which has every operatic CD set, commercial and ‘private’, that the most addicted collector might want or dream of. The auditorium is shallow, acoustically wonderful, and at first had only 1,000 seats; then a precipitous gallery was added, with a further 600 places for non-sufferers from vertigo.
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