Concert Tours and Opera Holidays with Tickets Included
These are holidays built around a performance: an opera in a Roman amphitheatre, a Strauss and Mozart programme in a Vienna concert hall, a military tattoo on a floodlit castle esplanade, a parade of citrus sculptures on the Riviera. The ticket is bought, the seat is allocated and the hotel is close enough that you are not hunting for a taxi at eleven at night.
We travel to these events because the setting is half the experience. The rest of the trip fills the daylight hours with guided walks, boat trips, palaces and tastings, so the performance arrives as the high point of a proper holiday rather than a single evening out.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Concerts & Events Tours
Yes. Every tour on this page includes the ticket for the event it is built around, and the category is stated in the tour's list of inclusions. Verona holidays use seated tickets in the Verdi sectors, the Vienna concert uses Category A seats, and the Nice and Menton parades are standing tickets. Seating differs between departures, so ask us which category applies to the date you are looking at.
No. Verona programmes the well-known works precisely because the audience is a mixed one, and Carmen, La Traviata and Rigoletto carry themselves on melody and spectacle alone. Most people find a short read of the plot beforehand is plenty. Your guide will usually talk you through the story and the staging during the day, and the rest of the itinerary is ordinary sightseeing.
Open-air venues make that decision themselves. At the Arena di Verona and on the Bregenz lake stage, a performance may be delayed while the stage is made safe, and in persistent heavy rain it can be curtailed or cancelled; the venue's own rules then govern any refund. It is uncommon in high summer but not unheard of. Ask us how a specific departure handles it before you book.
Yes, and many do. Choral societies, music clubs, U3A branches and church groups take these tours as private departures, with the whole coach and the block of tickets to themselves. Several of the British itineraries are already costed on a group of around thirty travellers. Event tickets are the limiting factor, so private group bookings for the bigger festivals need arranging well in advance. Tell us your numbers and preferred dates and we will look into it.
They suit solo travellers well, partly because the group naturally gathers around the shared reason for going. Several of the coach tours in Britain set aside a number of single rooms with no supplement, which is worth asking about early as they go quickly. On the flying tours a single supplement usually applies, and the amount is stated on the individual tour page. Ask us what is left on the departure you want.
Later than a normal touring day. Summer performances in Verona start once the heat has dropped, so it can be well past midnight before you are back at the hotel, and the Edinburgh Tattoo finishes late too. Where that happens, the following morning is usually gentler. If late nights are difficult for you, say so when you enquire and we will tell you honestly how a particular itinerary is shaped.
Opera in the Arena di Verona
The Arena was built by the Romans around two thousand years ago and has been used for opera since 1913. Performances begin as the light goes, the stone tiers hold their warmth, and the sets for Aida or Carmen are assembled in the open air on a scale no indoor theatre can manage. Voices carry unamplified across the bowl, which is the whole point of the place.
Our Verona holidays take in more than the evening itself. There are guided walks through Piazza Bra and the old streets, Juliet's House, the Roman Theatre across the river, a boat trip on Lake Garda, and an excursion to Mantua with its Ducal Palace. Hotel stays are in Verona for five nights, which means you walk back from the Arena rather than travel.
Ticket types vary by departure: our tours use seated tickets in the Verdi sectors rather than the unreserved stone steps.
Vienna's Musical Addresses
Vienna is the one city where a music holiday needs no manufacturing. Johann Strauss wrote The Blue Danube in an apartment on Praterstrasse, now a small museum of manuscripts, instruments and household oddments. At the Zentralfriedhof, Beethoven, Brahms and both Strausses lie within a few paces of one another, with a memorial to Mozart in the middle. The House of Music explains how the sound itself works.
Our Vienna tours end with a concert. On one, that means Strauss and Mozart at the Wiener Konzerthaus with Category A tickets; the hall opened in 1913 and still sounds as it was designed to. Elsewhere the draw is André Rieu and the Johann Strauss Orchestra, in the city that formed him.
Days include a guided coach tour, Schönbrunn Palace, walking tours of the musical landmarks, and on some departures an evening at a Heuriger with wine and music.
British Events by Coach
Not every event worth travelling for is abroad, and the coach makes the domestic ones straightforward: no parking, no city-centre driving, no late train home.
- The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, on the castle esplanade since 1950, paired on one tour with the Fringe and afternoon tea at The Dome.
- Kynren at Bishop Auckland, an open-air night-time retelling of two thousand years of English history performed by a volunteer cast, with Raby Castle and Durham by day.
- The Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye, ten days of talks in a town of second-hand bookshops, with Hay Castle and National Museum Cardiff alongside.
- Wakefield's rhubarb festival, in the triangle where forced rhubarb is still pulled by candlelight, plus a farm tour, Wentworth Woodhouse and the Hepworth.
Several of these include a number of single rooms at no supplement.
Festivals, Parades and Open-Air Stages
Some events are less about a seat than about being in the middle of a city that has given itself over to celebration. The Carnaval de Nice fills February with parades and float processions, and along the coast at Menton the Fête du Citron builds sculptures from tonnes of lemons and oranges. Our tickets for both parades are standing, so you are on your feet in a crowd for the duration.
The Feria of Seville arrives a fortnight or so after Easter: horses, carriages, sevillanas and the casetas. Staying in Jerez de la Frontera puts sherry bodegas and Andalusian horsemanship within easy reach of it.
At Bregenz, the opera is staged on a floating stage on Lake Constance, the audience seated on the shore with the lake behind the singers. That tour also visits Lindau, its marionette opera and a cruise on the water.
