This one was a last-minute decision for me, yet it was absolutely so worth it!
I suppose people who follow this blog are aware that I have a strong preference towards contemporary classical music. And so when it comes to opera, an opera dated from 1926 is not necessarily my first choice of opera to see. That said, I have seen a couple of other Puccini operas: the first opera I have seen was a Puccini opera, and the second one followed shortly thereafter. In any case, seeing a Puccini opera for me was more due to some coincidence, e.g. I was visiting a place and a Puccini opera happened to be playing. I suppose with this one, it is similar: I had nothing better to do one weekend, and realised that there was a Puccini opera playing in a city nearby. So I bought a ticket.
It turned out to be a wonderful evening. I went to Magdeburg for this one, a city that is about an hour and forty minutes away by train. And with my Deutschlandticket, I didn't have to pay extra for the train ride. And it was also close enough from Berlin that I didn't need a hotel to spend the night. So all I needed was to buy a ticket, and the best seats cost a mere 34 EUR. It turned out to be so worth it.
I did my research beforehand, listening to the opera before attending the show. That allowed me to focus on the story better. Come to think of it, the plot is rather racist: it depicts a very poor understanding of China. I mean, just look at the names of the ministers of the Chinese court: Ping, Pang, and Pong. No wonder the People's Republic of China banned it for a significant amount of time, as it is easy to see that it portrays China unfavourably. After all, it depicts a Chinese monarchy where there is a princess who kills her suitors if they answer riddles incorrectly. In any case, it was therefore very interesting to see how this has been depicted in 2025, where the story seems to have been reset in prehistoric (or perhaps post-Apocalyptic) times, which visually definitely moved far away from current conceptions of China.
I also loved the performance. Yes, Nessun dorma was fantastic, and gave me goosebumps. As I said, it was a 34 EUR ticket that was massively worth it. Not to mention that the theatre was very modern, with spacious and comfortable seats (as opposed to cramped ones in other more famous yet old theatres). So I thought the excursion was definitely worth it.
So yes, this might have been a last-minute decision to fill some empty weekend, but I was definitely very glad to have gone.
