Of the three nights I was in Vienna this time, I bought an actual ticket once (Night 3), the opera house was closed once (Night 2), and I stayed at the bar once (Night 1). I had intended to get a standing room ticket that first night, but traveling got the better of me.

However, the standing room ticket process seems the same now as it was fifteen years ago, according to the excellent guide on the Mostly Opera blog here.

April 11 (and April 9, for that matter) was a performance of Wagner’s Parsifal, his final opera and by far my favorite work in the medium by any composer. You can see the cast list in a photo of the poster in this album (view the original size on Flickr if it’s hard to read at the small default size). A decent performance in a mostly bad production (see the ominous disco ball on stage in a photo from my camera phone, taken on a backstage tour on Good Friday, April 10).

While studying abroad in Vienna I spent more hours waiting in line at the Vienna State Opera than any other activity – including (especially) studying. Hence the shots of colonnade outside the standing room entrance – my real home away from my home away from home. This building is notoriously hard to take in at a glance – there’s just no good angle on it – and therefore also hard to photograph. I’ve seen no good modern exterior shot of it, and certainly didn’t get one myself.

However, there are a couple of interesting views inside the opera house, and one of Mahler’s piano.

As always, in my opinion the set is best viewed in slideshow form on Flickr here (be sure to watch in full screen mode), but I’ve pasted in a gallery of thumbnails below.

My primary activity was attending performances of my favorite opera, Wagner’s Parsifal, at the Vienna State Opera. Photos and information on that to come.

But I also spent the better part of the day at the Zentralfriedhof, Vienna’s largest and best-known cemetery (there are several dozen major graveyards in this death-obsessed city).  About sixty-five photographs seemed worth sharing.

The bulk of the photos are of the church at the center of the cemetery. This building was originally known as the Dr. Karl Lueger-Gedächtniskirche, but in an apparent bit of whitewashing (Lueger, a much-loved mayor of Vienna, was a notorious anti-Semite) is now formally called the Friedhofskirche Zum Heiligen Karl Borromäus. Designed by Max Hegele, this church is one of the most spectacular examples of Viennese Jugendstil (art nouveau) architecture.

Most of the others are of grave sites. Hundreds of notable Austrians are buried in the Zentralfriedhof. I focused primarily on composers, opera singers, and other musicians (Beethoven to Falco to Zawinul – they’re all here).

More photos from Vienna to come, but here’s the best I could do at the Central Cemetery. (The photos are probably best worth browsing directly on Flickr here – the Flickr slideshow in Full Screen with “info enabled” is excellent – but I’ve also inserted a three-page gallery below.)