2005 Letter from Verona: Next stop, Verona, where we spent two days. The drive there took us through the craggy limestone Dolomite mountains. Very pretty. When we registered, we were given a list of the operas being staged in the Roman Amphitheater. The scheduled performance that night was Verdi’s "Aida". Did we want to go? The price of tickets included a bus ride to the theater and back to the campground. We had come during the Opera Festival. After due consideration, we decided that we couldn’t miss this opportunity. That meant that we couldn’t go into Verona for the afternoon, because the bus was scheduled for 5:15. At that time we were standing at the gate with a large number of other campers waiting for the bus. Ron brought a backpack with his cameras and our sandwiches, and I had an umbrella because the sky looked dark. It was quite warm, so we didn’t bother with our raincoats.

Big mistake. The bus was over an hour late –but that left plenty of time. "Aida" didn’t begin until 9pm, as we discovered when we arrived in the town. We got to the arena before 7 and picked up our tickets. The clerk assured Ron that the gates would open in about a half hour. In that half hour (which turned out to be considerably longer than 30 minutes), the heavens opened with a vengeance! We were grateful for our umbrella, but it really wasn’t enough. We were soaked to our skin long before they opened the gates. It was a real crowd scene. Indeed one young lady fainted and was carried out. And what a crowd. Absolutely soaked no matter what rain gear they had come with – and cheerful right up to the time the amphitheater opened the doors. We were in the first wave of people to get in.

We were sitting in The People’s Seats – marble bleachers from the first century. We therefore opted to rent cushions. We could not believe how many people streamed in after those who had been standing in the rain with us. We decided that there were thousands. Uneven steps – some so high that when Adelle tried going down to leave, she could not do it without help. Yet people much older than either of us were going up higher into the theater. It was absolutely an amazing experience – to view an opera with 15,000 other people. That’s how many were there. The acoustics were good enough so that there were no microphones. We were very high up and we heard it quite well indeed. The cast was almost 300 strong and they made a hellofa great chorus. The scenery, the staging and the lighting was spectacular.

Although the sky was certainly threatening, it never rained once the performance began. As night fell, it began to get cold, and we were shaking. We knew that the last act would not be over until 12:15 because that was when the bus would meet us. But we decided to leave at the second intermission, missing the last act. We thought that there must be open cafes and if not, walking around on ground level was certainly going to be warmer than sitting still, way up in the stadium. Continued..........