Festival fleecers (1): Edinburgh charges £30 for no-see opera seats
mainBellini’s Norma at the Edinburgh Festival is priced at £140 for best seats, down to ‘very restricted view’ at £60.
The lowest category of all is ‘no view.’ The EIF wants £30 for those.
What’s the Gaelic for chutzpah?
What’s worse? The £30, or the chippy, gratuitous use of “Luvvies” and “high-brow”?
Some people need to grow up.
Given that it finally introduces to the UK the revelatory Biondi/Minasi edition of this great score, something ROHCG has apparently been incapable of, it is worth every penny!
The cast of Olvera, Bartoli, Osborn, Kálmán helps too. (No conductor is listed at http://www.eif.co.uk/2016/norma.)
… from the press release: “Respected conductor Diego Fasolis conducts his ensemble I Barocchisti, playing on authentic instruments from the 19th century.”
Thanks. He’s supposed to be good. (Giovanni Antonini in the Salzburg performances was outstanding.)
The cast alone should have given many pause to buying overpriced tickets .
The Daily Retard with an up-to-the-minute revelation of the life of “luvvies”. Except that it was common knowledge last November when the opera was announced. Or is that your coverage of the arts? More than usual if so.
Surely more pertinent is that some regular Festival attenders who are on the official mailing lists may now have a chance of at least hearing the opera! They were not able to purchase tickets because the EIF authorities put this production on sale many months in advance of normal advance booking and failed to send even an email about this change of practice. If you didn’t hear about this in the media, regular patrons were screwed!
Given that the Edinburgh Festival has not once in its 69 year history had a Scottish director, I think your request for a Gaidhlig translator is sadly misplaced.
In the quite clumsily-built opera house of Lüdershofling (Bavaria), one can get a no-see seat for EU 5,–, and a no-see-and-no-hear seat in the foyer for EU 1,–. In Dutch small-town Haarlem’s opera house one is offered EU 8,50 if one would be prepared to stay away from the production. In Tywyn (Wales), there is no opera house at all, and the entire community is subsidized (by the EU) to keep it that way.
In many German theatres one can still buy good seats for about 10 Euros – Karlsruhe is 13 Euros for an excellent rear of circle ticket! (and surtitles are in English!) Braunschweig is about 12 Euros. Both include free public transport to/from the theatre!