Regular Tuesday gaming night at store. After all the "usual" games - No Thanks, Incan Gold, Kingdom Builder - tried also Opera. I had played it only once, couple of years ago and with two players - it was fun then and we decided to try it now with full board, 4 players. Beginning was quite tense - bidding for budget, deciding what roles to choose - but at some point the game mechanics fell apart. It happened soon after 3 players had built Paris and Maestro was visiting this city - after that 3 players of 4 received 20+ money during Income phase and there was no tension whatsoever on this scale anymore. You just bid to the level 10 at the beginning of the round and after that there were only some tactical decisions about who gets the first place for building Milan or sth. Building + opera purchasing cost less money than we received during Income phase, so bank was soon out of money and we started to take income in credits. After the game I even re-read the rules to check if we had missed some vital rules about money management, but no, everything seemed to be ok. Very strange. Money meant mothing at the end but nevertheless the person who got least of it, was left last... and the overall score spread was quite large. Lowered my BGG rating for this one 7->6.