YOU may have heard of horse opera but you ain't seen nothin' like this, pardner, no siree. A veritable masked, posse of Don Giovannis, some some feathered, one wrapped in a swathe of what looked like yellow parachute silk, another magnificent in black and red erupted on to the Ballymun Road and headed at a brisk trot for the Collins Avenue entrance of Dublin City University.

The occasion a joint celebration of the opening of the Ballymun Festival, together with a nod and a wink in the direction of Pimlico Opera's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, which was being mounted in a marquee in the grounds of the college yesterday as a free gift from DCU to the people of Ballymun.

"Given that most of us don't go to the opera, we're all taking off for the day," explained Vicky McElligott of the Ballymun Horse Project, which organised the cavalcade. "Four hundred kids for the afternoon performance, 400 adults in the evening. Not many kids from Ballymun have ever been inside the university, so it's a great chance for them to go in and see what it's like. I've been there a few times, and the idea that my kids could go there I'd love that."

Vicky works with the Ballymun Horse Project, which keeps 23 horses stabled in an old building in Ballymun. "We look after them well, and we have a vet and a farrier in regularly. We can't take care of all the horses in the area we don't have the room but we want to show that the working class horse isn't always treated badly.

"So we have Don Giovannis on horseback, Don Giovannis in coaches, exotic looking women with fruit, you name it. We've had people sewing for weeks to make the costumes we've had people's curtains brought in plastic bags."

Lunchtime Ballymun was bemused by the colourful goings on. What's all this in aid of?" demanded a woman holding a toddler by the hand. The toddler didn't know and didn't care. "Horsies," she chuckled, delighted and sure enough the horses were a joy to behold, coats gleaming, feathers on their heads nodding primly as they stepped daintily down the main road, with community Garda Joe Flaherty running flat out alongside to keep tabs on passing traffic.

On DCU's otherwise eerily silent campus, meanwhile, groups of kids were milling happily and noisily outside the marquee an hour before the show was due to begin, to the consternation of Pimlico Opera's lighting designer, Barry Bessani.

"I've got to focus, so I'm focusing, all right? You tell me when I'm supposed to do it, then. Or you can have the show like this." It was obviously no idle threat but the kids were unmoved and in due course, armed with balloons and painted faces red for Liverpool and Man U, the occasional blue for Everton they took their places on the marquee's canvas floor as if to the opera born.

"Now this," explained Derek Fitzpatrick, one of the organisers of the event, Ballymun man, DCU graduate and compere of a high order, "is Leporello. He's Don Giovanni's sidekick, OK? Sort of like Batman and Robin. Now I want six girls on stage with Leporello.

"No, six ... not 60," he added hastily as Leporello, a willowy blond baritone, was mobbed by an all too willing throng. The Don himself, meanwhile, was roundly booed and then cheered, not just for his effortless seduction of the gorgeous Zerlina, but also for his balletic beating up of Masetto, which brought gasps of admiration from children and mammies alike.

"Hang on, we'll just show you how that was done," said the Don gleefully, knocking the hapless Masetto to the ground yet again. "But don't try it yourselves at home. .

Everybody wanted to try conducting, though, which put Wash Kani, Pimlico Opera's founder and regular conductor, temporarily out of a job. Most people were willing to have a go at opera singing too once Ottavio, aka tenor Michael Bennett, explained how it was done.

"That guy with the high voice was in the Women's Resource Centre this morning," said Sandra, who was accompanied by children Anthony (10), Natasha (8) and Nicole (two months). "I was asking him what happens if they get a sore throat I'm awful nosey, you know and he told me they just have to sing through it, otherwise it gets, dry. And keep gargling with plenty of water.

AS Michael and his impromptu chorus reached a high C which would have left Pavarotti gob smacked, Sandra professed her self a bit uneasy about the enthusiasm with which newlyweds Masetto and Zerlina had taken to rolling around the stage in an earlier scene. A bit heavy for kids, all that, isn't it?"

The kids, needless to say, had no such reservations. Nor did Marie Louise O'Donnell, a lecturer in communications at DCU and the university's director of arts and performance.

"Isn't this brilliant?" she yelled, cheering and waving her arms with the rest. "Oi, you," a passing clown wagged a cautionary finger at her. "No spitting, swearing or standing on the seats. I'm watching you.