You didn't need to be an opera buff to fully enjoy Dublin City Council's series of musical performances, writes MARY MINIHAN.

OUTDOOR OPERA in Dublin city centre is accompanied by a surprisingly unobtrusive chorus of car horns, sirens, seagull cries, church bells and the odd aircraft travelling overhead.

Dublin City Council's free Opera in the Open series returned yesterday with a performance of Mozart's The Magic Flutein the amphitheatre at the Civic Offices in Wood Quay.

Elish Godley, who lives in the city centre, attended with baby Amalia. “There are not that many parks for a city dweller. The quality of sound here is extremely good, given there’s a lot of ambient traffic. The acoustics are fantastic,” she said.

Joe Heavy from Ringsend and Gerry Cronin from Cabra usually meet for lunch in the vicinity every Wednesday, but switch to Thursdays in August to enjoy the opera. “We’re pensioners but we worked in the Corporation. He was a painter and I was a blacksmith,” said Joe. “I’m very fond of classical music.”

Gerry praised the singers Janyce Condon, Stephen Fennelly, Mary Flaherty, Simon Morgan, Niall Morris, Sandra Oman and Liz Ryan, as well as musical director David Wray. “They’re good and they’re all comparatively young,” he said.

The singers dressed in contemporary style and performed with discreet microphones and a small selection of props, which included a fluorescent skipping rope.

There was also much praise for narrator Ted Courtney, whose tongue-in-cheek interpretive commentary between scenes amused the audience in the amphitheatre.

He explained that The Magic Flute originally ran for 100 nights in Vienna, "when Vienna was about the size of Dún Laoghaire, only not as nice".

Sheila Kane from Raheny said: “Ted Courtney makes the whole thing come alive.” Kane had arrived with two fold-up stools in her backpack. Other organised types stretched out on traditional tartan rugs or modern yoga mats. Some brought fishing stools and deckchairs.

Less efficient souls rested on coats and shopping bags or risked grass-stained jeans. Given the clement weather, umbrellas performed as parasols.

People milled in and out of the audience un-selfconsciously. Construction workers in Day-Glo jackets wandered in, removing their hard hats. A man walked his dog around the circular venue while a mother danced with her crying baby. A cyclist wheeled in and watched for a while before pedalling off again.

The smell of fish and chips wafted from the direction of Corkman Jack Drennan, a rent collector who said he enjoyed opera “now and again”.

Opera fan Denis Lynch from Raheny, who knows The Magic Flute very well, attended with his five-month-old grandson Robert.

“As both a purist and a populist I enjoyed it,” he laughed.

Come 2pm, office workers had to scurry back to their desks before the performance had finished.

Among them were solicitor Karen Berkeley and Katie Mannion, a trainee, who described the performance as “wonderful” and the amphitheatre as a “great space”, which they said should be used all summer.

For local woman Maura Kennedy, the performance was a real trip down memory lane.

“To think that I was actually born in this site: 13 Wood Quay. The house isn’t there any more. I remember hearing the bells of the cathedral every Sunday. It brings back memories,” she said.

Her friend Betty Malloy, originally from Howth, said it was wonderful to be able to enjoy the music in the middle of the city.

Tourists Sue and David Eyre from Leicester in England had stumbled across the performance while looking for somewhere to eat their lunchtime sandwiches. They said it was a “lovely surprise”, as was the weather, and they bought a CD as a souvenir.

A couple of self-confessed opera “veterans” also said they were delighted with the performance.

Margie Geraghty said she had read up on the story behind The Magic Flutebefore leaving her home in Sandyford yesterday morning, but found it complicated and was not sure she would get a handle on it.

“It’s Mozart, not Handel,” joked her husband Alan.

Handel's turn comes next Thursday, with a performance of Julius Caesarat 1pm.