The Opera House

Advantages: Wasn't expensive
Disadvantages: Hour tour wasn't long enough

...SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE Sydney Opera house is located on the eastern headland of Circular Quay just a few minutes from the train station. It is made up of 1,056,000 Swedish tiles on the roof, which are off white and are self-cleaning. Construction began in 1959 after a Danish architect Jorn Utzon won an international design competition for the $7 million building. In 1966 Utzon quit after political interference leaving Australian architects to design the interior costing $102million. He has never seen the building completed. Utzon who is now in his eighties has announced to refurbish the interior and he has high hopes that it will be full of colour rather than a black hole. His son comes to Australia to oversee any developments. It was finally was completed against all odds and after several disagreements in 1973. It now is one...

DeniseKelly40 24.09.2007 (23.04.2008) · Read review
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Review of Sydney Opera House

Dial O for Opera

Advantages: Speed dial makes navigating oh so easy!
Disadvantages: Initial load up is very slow.

...As a family of six there is much logging in, off and out on our computer. Many a day goes by when I find myself on my son's profile on MySpace or in my wife's eBay account without even realising how I got there. It was therefore, with a heavy heart that I decided to find myself a web browser of my own. My wife and kids are now left to the wondrous firefox as I scour the web for a viable alternative. Naturally, Internet Explorer is straight off the menu as its massive security flaws and general style make it repulsive to me. Safari looked promising on first download only for me to find that it just was not compatible with several of my favourite sites. This left me with but one alternative...Opera. I have never really fancied the idea of the Opera Web Browser. For some reason it always came across as a very serious product to me...

Shortsharpshock 18.11.2007 · Read review
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Review of Opera 9

Top Quality Opera for All

Advantages: Beautifully produced, top quality singing
Disadvantages: None

...As an aspiring opera singer I am keen to get to see as much opera as I possibly can and to get the best experience I can for the least amount of money possible! The Royal Opera House is almost certainly the most well known opera house in Britain and I look forward to every production I see there, knowing that it will be a real treat for the ears and the eyes! - Booking tickets - First things first, how to book tickets. You may be under the impression that tickets for the opera are hugely expensive and yes, for certain seats they are - for the big Wagnerian productions the best seats will go for upwards of £200! However, seats in the Ampitheatre are far more reasonably priced (around £22-30) and if you're willing to stand then tickets can be as low as £5 (I stood last weekend and it's really not as bad as it sounds, in fact the view...

bubblegum_princess 04.11.2008 · Read review
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Review of Royal Opera House London

Elysees Opera/America Opera Hotel - Paris, France.

Advantages: Location, Room Size
Disadvantages: Facilities offered were minimal.

...I stayed in this hotel in August 2007 and the following is my view and opinion. I would also like to state that on Ciao, this hotel is listed as a 1 star hotel, whereas in fact the Elysees Opera is a 3 star hotel. The hotel is named America Opera and Elysees Opera, i stayed in the Elysees Opera. I'm not sure as to why there are 2 names? Location The road of Rue de Turin was very easy to find. We got the Metro to the nearest stop, Rome, and we were provided with a small map illustrating the location. So we found the road and walked down it, only passing one hotel on the way down. This hotel was named The America Opera. However we had booked in to The Elysees Opera Hotel. So we kept walking until we got to the end of the road. We decided that we would go to the hotel and ask for directions to our one. As we approached we...

lustba 17.04.2008 (21.04.2008) · Read review
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Review of America Opera Hotel, Paris

English National Opera - A National Treasure

Advantages: Accessible staging, good balance in programming, great education programmes
Disadvantages: Singing is not always consistently amazing

...As an aspiring opera singer (currently working in admin - oh, the glamour! - but hoping to go back to college in the near future), I try to attend as much live opera as I can. Living in London is great for this - we are spoilt with 2 international level opera houses, as well as numerous touring companies and high standard amateur productions. English National Opera is generally seen as the Royal Opera House's more accessible sibling - slightly cooler, slightly more modern. All productions are staged in English and the singing is generally of a very high standard. English National Opera's home is the Coliseum on St Martin's Lane, just off Trafalgar Square, so easily accessible from Charing Cross Station (Mainline or underground) or bus routes 3, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 23, 24, 29, 53, 77a, 88, 91, 139, 159, 176, or if you're travelling by...

bubblegum_princess 02.03.2009 · Read review
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Review of English National Opera

A BAD Night At The Opera

Advantages: One of the best in the Charlie Chan series, Boris Karloff, great characters, fun
Disadvantages: None

..., daughter, were always played by Oriental actors. 'Charlie Chan at the Opera' starts with the magnificent classic horror legend Boris Karloff as an inmate of an insane asylum. He has amnesia and no one knows who he is, but he does a mean line in opera singing - as the film opens, he is sitting accompanying himself on a grand piano as he belts out an Italian song in full basso profundo. A male nurse enters the room and flicks today's paper across to Boris, and there is a front-page article about a Madame Lilli Rochelle, whom Boris recognises. He becomes agitated, declaring 'I have to get out of here right away!', conks the nurse out and steals his uniform. We're then immediately shown new newspaper headlines: 'MANIAC OVERPOWERS GUARD, ESCAPES', so we know we're in for a spot of trouble ahead. At the local police station, in comes Charlie Chan...

thereddragon 13.08.2006 · Read review
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Review of Charlie Chan - At The Opera (DVD)

A trip to Opera

Advantages: It's Free, reliable and stable.
Disadvantages: No page progress bar

...Intro. I have recently had a PC disaster, my hard drive gave up the ghost and I lost everything and so the joyous task of reinstalling began. All went well until it came to reinstalling my web browser. I have always used Yahoo in conjunction with internet explorer but on reinstall I had major issues with both. I spend upwards of eight hours a day performing various tasks on the internet so my browser is one of the most important pieces of software for me. Now, as Explorer wanted to crash every five minutes and Yahoo were slow in getting back to me to solve my issue with them, I decided to try Opera. A little bit of history. Opera was first started as a research project for a company called Telenor in Norway. This was way back in 1994. Since then the browser has gone through many changes and come up with new features that...

docpov 04.05.2008 · Read review
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Review of Opera 9

A Night At The Opera!

Advantages: Lovely Buiding, Lots Of History
Disadvantages: Quite Expensive

...No visitor to the Derbyshire Town of Buxton on the edge of the Peak District National Park could have failed to see the Buxton Opera House. I visit Buxton perhaps one day every month and I am ashamed to say that I have almost come to take this beautiful building for granted. Until recently however this was never a place that I had been inside. Opera had never been high on my list of things to see but when a friend recently came over from America, visiting the Buxton Opera House was high on his agenda. It would seem that the reputation of this place really is Worldwide, or at least its status has spread as far as California. There is no denying that this building is grand by every definition of the word. It was designed by Frank Matcham who also designed London's Palladium and Coliseum. The Buxton Opera House, which opened in 1903...

micksheff 26.05.2007 · Read review
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Review of Buxton Opera House, Derbyshire

The Phantom of the Opera, a truly beautiful film.

Advantages: The attention to detail is impeccable, the scenes beautiful, the casting brilliant.
Disadvantages: I wish i could have changed the ending or liked Gerald Butler less.

...The film phantom of the opera is a stunning film; it is the perfect mix of romance and horror, action and despair. Gerald Butler, who plays the role of the Phantom in the film, is spectacular. His voice is truly beautiful and you really feel his agony and lament of his tortured childhood and lonely upbringing. But he is also terrifying as the Phantom and you really fear for Christine and Raoul’s lives in his hands. But you also see this human fragile side, of a man who has felt no love from anyone, and rarely any kindness. All he wants is to be loved and understand what it is to be a man. Gerald Butler is truly a triumph in this film. Emmy Rossum plays the simple chorus girl turned opera star Christine Daae. I very much enjoyed her performance. I thought she brought the right mixture of sexuality but innocence to the film, and she...

violetxoxo 08.05.2009 · Read review
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Review of The Phantom Of The Opera (DVD)

He's there the Phantom of the opera!

Advantages: Wonderfull plot,music and art direction.
Disadvantages: Not long enough!

...Gaston Leroux's classic novel and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical is brought to our television screens in this tragic gothic tale of unrequited love that's set in the nineteenth century. Get the tissues out girls! If you love angst ridden romance, this is the movie for you. The story is about a man horribly deformed who hides in the cellars of a French opera house, known only as the Phantom, a violent ghost who extorts money out of the opera house managers. A young chorus girl called Christine Daae always hears a voice singing to her whenever she falls asleep which she calls the Angel of music (The Phantom). As the Phantom and Christine's love grows an obstacle is created- one Raoul De Chagny, the patron of the opera house and Christine's childhood love. Jealously and desire drives the Phantom into a rage and he does everything in his...

Mistybrook 05.08.2008 (24.08.2008) · Read review
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Review of The Phantom Of The Opera (DVD)