Teatro Colón
Yesterday, I went to the Teatro Colòn to do a guided tour. I ended up doing the guided tour in English because the line was shorter. There were a couple of gringos in line. I also met a girl from Patagonia (I forget which city, but it´s a smaller one) who studied to be an English teacher and was doing the tour in English to practice her English.
The Teatro was very impressive. It´s one of the world´s largest opera houses, compared to one in Milan and in New York. We entered in the opera house at street level into an area with displays, a grand marble staircase leading up to the halls that go to the box seats. In that main area, you could look up about 4 floors to see thedomed stained glass window depicting scenes from Greek mythology. The stained glass had come from France. The floor of the area consisted of small white mosaic tiles in the repeating shapes of a fan. There was various colors of marble, imported from various parts of the world that made the columns, the base of the columns, the stairs, and the sides of the stairs.
We went upstairs, past a few free standing sculptures and sculptures of the busts of various composers chiseled into the building itself. We went through two hallways with gold leaf accented walls and murals on the ceiling. The chandeliers in these hallways were huge, holding about 200 light bulbs.
We then entered another hallway to one that leads to doors for the second floor box seats (I think), next to the presidential box suite. In the box seats is room for 6 people on antique velvet covered chairs. We saw that actors were rehersing for the Barber of Seville to start in early August.
The theater is in a horseshoe shape, with about 4 or 5 floors. At the top two floors is the standing room only area. At the bottom of the theater are many chairs. I think Natalia said that the theater is able to hold about 3,000 people. There was a fresco on the ceiling, depicting various scenes with a man in white, who is said to be a muse. And in the middle of the fresco is a huge chandelier, holding 700 light bulbs. Part of it comes down all the way, and the part that does not come down is used for actors to emulate the voice of god or noises from above (they stand in an area on top of the chandelier.
We exited the lush box seats, entered into the room where the President gets welcomed if he attends a show. A lady in vintage Renaissance style costume played the Stradavarius? for us.
The rest of the tour showed us the workings that go into the theater. We went to the basement, where all of the work is done. We saw the storage room, where 88,000 costumes are stored, some borowed from other International theaters as well as the sewing room, where the costumes are made. Dress forms were a plenty, and the tailors were working hard.
We looked into the area where shoes are made. They have about 22,000 pairs of shoes at the opera house. Some of them have about 10 inches of platform heel. Maybe I could use them 😉 We also passed by the carpentry area, a huge area where they build props for the scenes; and by the painting area, where they paint the backdrops for the scenes. Picture it as a huge school gymnasium, floor coverd with canvas. There are stairs to a platform so that the painters can view the backdrops from afar.
We saw rehersal rooms as well. The rehersal room for the children had black paint on the window so the children won´t get disrupted. We also passed by a few rehersal rooms where actors and actresses were rehersing dancing parts.
It was a great and worthwhile tour for 7 pesos (student price – a little over $2). It makes you realize that there is so much that goes into a production, and a production of a mass scale takes a large sized crew to keep it going.
Tags: Buenos Aires, Travel
Marisa