Giuseppe Verdi Concert at Teatro Municipal

After a big day of walking around Rio, we still needed to get cleaned up before the Giuseppe Verdi concert at Teatro Municipal.  We visited the ticket office of the Municipal Theater earlier that day, but we did not take the tour.  Our intention was to get to the venue at least 30 minutes early so that we could tour the public areas of the theater on the way to our seats.  We asked our bed and breakfast for advice about getting to and from the concert venue and they said that it would be safe to take the Metro to the concert, but to flag down a taxi and have the taxi bring us back to the bed and breakfast.
That turned out to be good advice and we saved a little money on taking the Metro instead of taking a taxi both ways.


The Rio Metro was quick and easy and we arrived at the Cinelandia Metro stop and the concert venue, Teatro Municipal with plenty of time before the concert was scheduled to begin.

The first half of the concert was (IMO) quite boring.  There was a chorus of about 50 vocalists singing in unison (no solos) for the first half while the orchestra hardly played.  Most of the musicians sat around looking quite bored during this time.
I was very unlucky as the person sitting next to me at the concert decided to bring her 3-year old child.  Apparently the theater allows "lap children" (similar to the airline where if the kid can fit in your lap, you don't have to buy a ticket for them).  This "lap child" acted like a normal 3-year-old talking, flapping her arms wildly, kicking her legs, blowing bubbles with her mouth, etc...  I got kicked about 100 times during the first half and almost had my eye poked out by this kid.  Due to the language barrier, I couldn't really complain to the ushers, so I started scoping out a better seat.  During intermission we moved to a completely unoccupied row on the side of the theater and enjoyed ourselves for the 2nd half of the concert.

The 2nd half of the concert went much better than the first half.  Not only because I was away from the kicking child, but also because the orchestra played better known works of Verdi.  The musicians were not quite as bored as they actually played their instruments.  As someone who enjoys symphonic concerts I always plan to stay for the encore.  I was surprised at the end of this concert that some of the patrons left.  The orchestra played their best song with 2 of the chorus members stepping out front and performing an amazing vocal duet.  The encore was probably the best performance of the night.