I have recently been to the Opera at the famous Royal Opera House, Covent Garden – London.
The show was impressive, a unique experience where we enjoyed the high quality level of the performance combined to an amazing location. I saw Tosca and Carmen – exceptiona cast especially for Carmen since it was a turn A.
Now I will try to answer to the most common questions regarding “going to the Royal Opera House”.
How much does it cost Royal Opera House?
In general this question come first since many people (me first) think Royal Opera House is very expensive and unaffordable.
I will tell you the truth. I spent like an “ordinary”theatre and enjoyed an extraordinary experience.
This because Royal Opera House is huge and gives the opportunity to choose among a rich variety of seats and places. They also have some “standing” place tickets where you have your place booked but cannot seat (you see your place number in the floor). Of course it is hard to stand during a long Wagner Opera but in the case of shorter ones it can be feasable. There are some seats where you can rest and the great advantage of these places is that you are in front of the stages for 12-15£!
Upper Amphitheathre tickets are still affordable 30-40£ and view is nice.
Do you have to book in advance?
Shows at the Royal Opera House get sold out very quickly – so if you have the possibility to book them as soon as sales are available it would be better.
ANYWAY, I was in London and I actually had no planned in advance to go to the Royal Opera House. When I decided to – which is 4-5 days before, everything was sold out.
But I found a way. In case of Tosca, the night before the show I attended, I searched for some spare ticket on a website ticket.viagogo.com were people have the possibility to sell online their unused tickets. Imagine you book in advance your attendance at theatre and on the day of the performance you cannot attend anymore. On viagogo you can put your ticket on sale -you can also choose the price (the bad thing is that sometimes unconvinient places are shown for sale at very high price, especially if close to the show date and show is sold out). Buyer will have also to pay the handling fee and IVA- so price gets higher than what is shown.
For example I bough t my Tosca ticket this way and when I got the ticket I noticed that it originally costed 12£ while I had paid 39£. But of course, I bought it the night before the event when everything was sold out.
For Carmen I actually was luckier. Yes, because I took advantage of the “Friday Rush” of Royal Opera House, a great way to get last minute tickets. When the timer counts down to 1pm each Friday during the Season, 49 new Friday Rush are available to buy for each of the performances listed (the Balcony tickets are for standing places). You can purchase a maximum of two Friday Rush tickets for each performance.
Ok, the best it to book in advance as soon as tickets are available and benefit from good places at convenient prices.
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