Coliseu dos Recreios Concerts

Beautiful theater. The theater employees were all fantastic folks. No alcohol was served for our show (no sure if that is true of all shows), and fair warning: get in line early for 'The Loo' at break time. Jethro Tull rocked the house!

We saw the Christmas Circus and it was a great show, several different groupa of top notch performers, perfect for Kids and longer than we expected. Go to the earlier shows as the evening show has extremely long lines.

The experience with the Swan Lake was beautiful, the sound quality was impeccable, you could almost feel the orchestra was right in front of you. However, the seatings are very unfortunate - I barely saw the stage and were sitting in a prime row, I can’t even imagine what the others could see. The event was in the afternoon, with hundreds of of children, and there was no booster or anything that could allow them to see the show. If it’s an experience you want to savor, or if it’s your first experience (as it certainly was for 90% of those kids), this is not a minor detail.

I went there more recently to see John Cleese on his "Last time to see me" tour and, again, it was a great feeling. It's a large hall, very popular, in a building that shows its age but that it's still the place to go for every performer coming to Lisbon, rather than more modern and fancy venues.

I have been to "madame Butterfly" yesterday and the place is really not made for opéra. People are not the usual public for that so they do not respect the rules of staying silent and not using the phones. Too bad the ushers are not more careful about this. And the chairs are quite uncomfortable for a 3 hours show.