Day 5 – Noah J. – Touring Teatro Colón

Hello there! My name is Noah and I am a semi-proud member of our Tenor section! Today has been one of my favorites so far, and the absolute highlight has to be our tour of Teatro Colón!

I am ashamed to admit that I had completely forgotten at this point what Teatro Colón even was. I knew it was a place important to Argentina's history and culture, but I had no clue what I was going into on the walk there. However, that mistake actually made the moment stepping into the building and seeing it even more special!

Teatro Colón is an Opera house in Buenos Aires and is widely regarded as one of the best opera houses in the world. In fact, the famous Pavarotti himself once said that the only flaw in Teatro Colón is that the acoustics are so perfect, you can't make any mistakes.

Throughout the tour, I was in awe of the building's beauty. Every single pillar and painting and chandelier were perfectly placed to craft a magical experience. The combination of Italian and French architecture was truly inspired, and I am so glad I had the knowledge I gained from Music History to be able to appreciate those details even more!

One of my favorite architectural details that I noticed was in a long hallway on the third floor. In this hallway, there we large doors leading to different parts of the Opera house, each with the name and face of a famous composer sculptured above. At the end of the hallway, the last two composers represented were Verdi and Wagner, two titans in Opera during there time with vastly different musical styles. To emulate this, the sculptured faces of both were turned away, as to not look at each other! That gave me a good laugh!

Verdi on the left, Wagner on the right

Now the best has to be the auditorium itself. Walking into it and seeing the full scale was a completely surreal experience. I genuinely could not believe it to be built by humans! I wish my phone camera was better because the pictures truly don't even capture an ounce of Teatro Colón's true wonder. It is an absolute dream space to be in from both and audience and a performer perspective.

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NAU Shrine of the Ages Blog: Adventures in Argentina

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