Okay, for once, I'm going to have to agree with Patrick about starting times.
I am usually fine with a 8 p.m. start. I see from the Tales of Hoffman page at San Francisco Opera's web site that most weekday performances of Hoffman are starting at 7:30, but not the Friday night. People, by Friday, many of us are a little tired from our day jobs. In the mid-90s, when I didn't have a commute to speak of and I was 18 years younger, 8 p.m. on a Friday wasn't a problem. Now that I'm up around 6 a.m. and have a long, long commute, well, let's just say that I understand why the Friday audience is a little more subdued than the Sunday audience.
I really wish the show had started at 7:30. As it was, even with very short intermissions, Hoffman finished at 11:30 and it was 12:40 by the time I got home. You'd think it was a Wagner opera.
I also was not feeling great, having had a little too much cheese at a party at work and not having gotten enough sleep during the week. Before the opera, trying to figure out where to have dinner, I actually avoided a possible encounter with someone I know; under other circumstances, I would have been happy to say hi and chat with him. I seriously considered skipping the opera altogether, and was sufficiently jammed in during the first act that I thought about leaving even though I liked what I was seeing and hearing.
Okay, obviously only part of the problem was the 8 p.m. start time. That'll teach me to overindulge at TGIF.
I'm in the bridge-and-tunnel brigade. I'd appreciate having the extra half hour to deal with Friday evening rush hour. Still, I try to avoid Friday evening events because I tend to be tired and cranky.
ReplyDeleteI am too: during the week, I'm usually coming from Mountain View, with uncertain traffic. I once arrived in Civic Center at 7:10, meaning dinner was a sandwich at Davies instead of a leisurely dinner at Grove. So earlier starting times are tough on Fridays.
ReplyDeleteI can't go to Sunday afternoon performances any more (I teach jujitsu at 4 p.m.), so I had to swap my tickets for the summer operas. June is a packed month, and most Saturdays wouldn't work, so I wound up on Friday for this one.
Oh, haha, looked up your profile. Believe we have met. :)
ReplyDeleteSurely the difference between starting times has to do with what time they expect people will be getting up the following morning.
ReplyDeleteWhether that should be the controlling factor or not is another issue.
Wednesday has been 7:30 for as long as I can remember. A long time.
ReplyDeleteI'm a Saturday night kind of gal - I either can't stay awake long enough on a Friday or else my shift (10-7) just doesn't let me get anywhere on time during the week. For my part then, 730 or 8 - wouldn't make a difference. I'm just now picking out next year's tickets, but they'll all be for Saturday night performances. (Sundays are out, too since I teach on the weekends. Would be nice to have a 2-day weekends again!)
ReplyDeleteThat is really busy, can understand the Saturday night preference/requirement.
ReplyDelete(I got your comment twice, am only publishing one. Comments don't appear right away because they are moderated.)
Here in Los Angeles, start times are a big deal since Disney Hall and The Dot are smack-dab in the middle of some of the very worst traffic nightmares in the US (the 10/110 and the 110/5/101 split).
ReplyDeleteThe LA Opera was in a bad spot trying to schedule the Freyer Ring. Ringnuts like a Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday schedule because it's only 5 days off work (if they work M-F, of course) and they can travel on the weekends. By trying to accommodate the traffic reality of us locals, they spread the cycles out to 9 - 10 days, which kept Ringnuts away. OK, the production did too, but still.