The seats go before the flights do. Book the music first.
Which Vienna concert is in the golden hall and which is in a side chapel. What a fado house charges once the wine is on the table. Whether the Danube dinner boat is the band or the buffet. Reviews of live music you can book, city by city.
Vienna · the Musikverein’s Golden HallMozart Concert at the Musikverein – Golden Hall★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · from $81
Lisbon · fado with a glass of portLive Fado Show with Port Wine at Lisboa em Fado★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · from $18
Sydney · inside the Opera HouseOpera House Guided Tour with Entrance Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · from $33
Four live music nights worth planning a trip around.
A baroque church in Vienna, a music house in Porto, a paddle steamer with a jazz band on the deck, and Vivaldi in the city that keeps playing him.
01The big oneVivaldi’s Four Seasons Concert in KarlskircheFour Seasons under the dome at Karlskirche, played by a chamber orchestra in the room it suits. The easiest first night in Vienna to get right.
02The cheap oneLive Fado Show with Glass of Port WineA fado show with a glass of port in a Porto music house, for the price of a main course. Nobody comes out calling it cheap.
03The one on a deckNew Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise with Dinner OptionTwo hours on the Mississippi with a jazz band playing the whole way and dinner if you want it. Buy the boat and the music together.
04Strings, no wiresInterpreti Veneziani Concert at Church of San VidalA Venetian ensemble in a church by the Accademia bridge, playing to a few hundred people with nothing plugged in.
Golden hall, palace ballroom or parish church. Pick the room.
Austria sells the same composers in three very different rooms, at three very different prices. Here is what each one is, and what it costs to walk in.
Six cities that keep a room full every night of the week.
A gilded hall in Vienna, fado houses two hours apart in Lisbon and Porto, baroque strings in Venice, brass on the Mississippi in New Orleans, and a lit-up Danube in Budapest. Six places to hear live music, and the best seats in each.
The live music people book most, anywhere in the world.
The full catalogue of nights →One list, no borders. The concerts, cruises and shows more travellers book than anything else, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Concert in Karlskirche
Hear Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on period instruments inside Vienna’s Karlskirche, with practical tips on seats, temperature, timing, and value.
From · $40
Read our review →
2
La Fenice Opera House Entry Ticket with Audio Guide
from $14
3
Opera House Guided Tour with Entrance Ticket
from $33
4
New Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise with Dinner Option
from $58
5
Budapest Danube Cruise and Dinner Options, Live Music and Dance
from $54
6
3-Course-Dinner Cruise on the Seine with live music
from $135
7
Classical Concert in the World-Famous Musikverein
from $17
8
Live Fado Show with Glass of Port Wine
from $23
The band sounds better when the room is moving.
River boats and harbour catamarans put the music where the view is: a jazz quartet on a Mississippi paddle steamer, a folk band on the Danube, a saxophone on a Barcelona sunset sail. Dinner is usually optional and usually worth it.
Fado is a small room, two guitars and nothing plugged in.
Everything in Portugal →
Lisbon sings it in the Alfama and Porto sings it in tiled front rooms two hours up the coast. The lights go down, the room stops talking, and the guitarra portuguesa does the crying. Three ways to hear it, depending on how the evening is going.
A show and a glass of port
An hour and a bit in a fado house with something local in front of you. Enough to hear why the city bothers, short enough to eat afterwards.
Dinner, then the singing
A Portuguese dinner with the fadistas working the room between courses. The music tends to start once the plates are cleared, so keep the rest of the night free.
Fado and port in the same room
Porto folds it into the port trade: a cellar on the Gaia bank, then a few songs upstairs with the wine you have just been shown how to taste.
Venice plays Vivaldi nightly, and some of it is very good.
The costumed groups on the Rialto flyers are not the whole story. There are ensembles working in churches and scuole with three centuries of practice behind them, and a working opera house you can sit in for the price of a museum.
Every Venice night →
What a night of live music actually costs.
Every show on the site, grouped by what it costs. A lot of the best rooms in Europe come in under the dinner you would have had instead.
Church concerts, fado houses, piano recitals and most classical tickets.
Dinner cruises with a band, opera tickets, palace concerts with a meal attached.
Gala nights, four-course cruises and the seats people fly in for.
Three rooms that do not exist anywhere else.
Concert halls are everywhere. A hall built before anyone could model acoustics that turned out near-perfect, a piano ringed by candles, and an opera sung through a painted mask are not.
The Golden Hall
The Musikverein opened in 1870 with no acoustic modelling behind it at all, and turned out to be one of the finest rooms for an orchestra anywhere. The shoebox shape, the wooden floor over a hollow cavity and the caryatids down the sides all do work. Tickets run from standing places at the back to the front of the stalls, and the gap between them is smaller than you would expect.
- 1Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Concert in Karlskirche★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 14,951 reviews
- 2Classical Concert in the World-Famous Musikverein★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 6,673 reviews
- 3Mozart Concert at the Musikverein – Golden Hall★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 5,194 reviews
Chopin by candlelight
Krakow puts Chopin in small salons and churches lit by candles and very little else. The programmes run about an hour, the piano sits a few metres from the front row, and a glass of wine in the interval is usually part of the ticket. Take the earlier programme if you want to eat afterwards.
- 1Candlelit Dinner River Cruise with Live Music★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,154 reviews
- 2Budapest Danube River Candlelit Dinner Cruise with Live Music★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,770 reviews
- 3Italian Opera Night Concert by Candle Glow★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 630 reviews
The face-changing
Sichuan opera is a variety night: fire-breathing, hand shadows, a comic turn, then bian lian, where an actor sheds painted silk masks faster than the eye follows. How it is done is a state secret in the literal sense. The teahouse shows in Chengdu serve tea and an ear-cleaning between acts.
- 1Sichuan Opera Shu Feng Yan Yun Evening Show Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 185 reviews
- 2Chengdu Sichuan Opera Show Ticket – Shu Feng Ya Yun★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 73 reviews
- 3Traditional Cultural Show Peking Opera Tickets★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 66 reviews
What a live music ticket does not tell you.
Seating is the big one. Church and candlelight concerts are almost always unnumbered, so the ticket buys the room and turning up twenty minutes early buys the seat. Opera houses number everything and sell the cheap places behind pillars. Dinner shows quote a start time for the food, not the band. And a summer arena night goes ahead in the rain, right up until it does not.
Four rooms that sell out before you land.
Most of this can be arranged from the hotel that afternoon. These four run on seasons, calendars and rooms that hold a few hundred people, and they go weeks out.
- 01Arena di Verona Opera TicketThe Arena stages opera across the summer only, and the stone steps of a Roman amphitheatre go first.
- 02Christmas & New Year’s Concert in St. Peter’s ChurchAdvent and New Year programmes are sold as a fixed run of dates. Miss the window and the same church is dark until next December.
- 03Classical Concert in the World-Famous MusikvereinThe Golden Hall seats under two thousand and Vienna fills it most nights of the season. A same-week ticket means the seats nobody wanted.
- 04La Fenice Opera House Entry Ticket with Audio GuideOpera house visits run around the stage: on performance and rehearsal days the auditorium closes to visitors, sometimes at a day’s notice.
In New Orleans the band is the transport.
The Natchez and the Creole Queen run jazz up and down the Mississippi with a working band on deck and the option of dinner below. On land, Frenchmen Street starts around nine and does not thin out until the small hours. Same music, different volume.
- 1New Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise with Dinner Optionfrom $58
- 2New Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruisefrom $43
- 3Evening Steamboat Jazz Cruise + Optional Dinnerfrom $58
Vienna, Salzburg, Prague, Budapest: the run that is nothing but music.
Krakow
WarsawThe newest live music reviews.
More new nights →
Brussels: Private Beers, Bars, and Live Music Tour by Night
Read our review →
Branson: The Texas Tenors Concert Admission Ticket
Read our review →
Bonn: Sunday Brunch Buffet with Cologne live music
Read our review →
Bonn: Seniors’ cruise with live music on the MS Moby Dick
Read our review →
Blackpool: The Jersey Beats – Oh What A Nite! Music Show
Read our review →
Classical concerts in Köpenick Palace – Aurora Hall
Read our review →
Beijing Culture Event: Tea Ceremony, Music Show, Calligraphy
Read our review →
