Guess My Location

[NemesisUK]

[DavidCM]

Swiss/Austrian opera festival?

Can,t remember the name..late father in law used to go regularly.

[NemesisUK]

You are very very close!

We have just come from a performance of Sleeping Beauty (not a particularly good performance IMHO) taking in the chilly night air before a nightcap 

[DavidCM]

The name came back to me...about 4.00 am this morning.. Bregenz.

[NemesisUK]

Correct country but not the city..

[royoftherovers]

Oberammergau

[Rabbers]

Vienna (Staatsoper)?

[NemesisUK]

2 hours ago, Rabbers said:

Vienna (Staatsoper)?

Give that man a cigar!

Well spotted Renato. A wonderful venue with a rather disconcerting fire curtain! Not something one can forget easily, believe me I've tried 🥺 

We're having a short break in Vienna and just back from a tour through Die Spanische Hofreitschule What a pampered life those stallions lead 😎 Some had just finished a performance and went straight under the infrared lamps to relax the muscles. Beautiful creatures.

[NemesisUK]

2 hours ago, royoftherovers said:

Oberammergau

Sorry John, wrong country 

[Rabbers]

2 hours ago, NemesisUK said:

We're having a short break in Vienna ….

One of my favorite capitals.  More visitor-friendly than most, architecturally elegant, dense with history, good eating (if hi-cal) marred only by the evil (though avoidable) local white wine.  Been to Die Spanische only once and was lucky enough to get centre seats at the end directly opposite to the Imperial gallery and thus admire the perfect geometries of the group events.  Enjoy the rest of your stay.

[NemesisUK]

This was the second visit to the school, a few years back we attended a performance of the dancing stallions. What beauty and elegance. As an enthusiastic rider in my younger years I really appreciated the horsemanship. Their life is dedicated to the perfection and continuation of those skills, true masters 

[Rabbers]

12 hours ago, NemesisUK said:

 What beauty and elegance ...Their life is dedicated to the perfection and continuation of those skills, true masters ...

I confess that I've never not even once sat on a horse but have always admired feats of horsemanship as a spectator.  During a student year I spent at the University of Seville in the 60s I was befriended by a prominent local family that owned a private box at the local bullring, La Maestranza, and I was often invited to join them to watch the fights (which I would probably enjoy less today than I did then).   One of the major events of the season was the rejoneo by the legendary Peralta brothers, Angel and Rafael, who fought and killed the bulls from horseback.  The show they put on, with the horses completely unprotected from the bulls' horns, was balletic in its intricacy and all the more amazing since the horses' movements were controlled largely by the pressure of the riders' legs so that the hands could remain free for the fight and kill.  Thrilling as this was, the best was yet to come when, a few weeks later the family, with me in tow, was invited by the Peraltas, with whom they were friends, to a wedding at their horse farm and estate not far from Seville.  Here, as a gift to the newly-weds, the brothers and their staff and trainees put on a private rejoneo with blunt-horned tame or tame-ish bulls kept for training purposes (and not for killing) together with a riotous exhibition of virtuoso trick riding in which the participants tried to outdo one another.  All dangerous good fun with, surprisingly, nobody ending up with a broken neck.  The level of horsemanship was simply mind-boggling, and what has stuck in my memory is that the horses seemed to love it too.