It's enough to turn a girl's head, what with the sangria and the tapas and the handsome opera singer who is "single and looking for a missus". He's on the loose in Dublin at the moment, but he will remain unidentified in On The Town. Mr Opera Singer, you know who you are and we await your call.
Also present for Opera Ireland's reception to launch their winter season are the three moustachioed barbers of Drury Street Barber Shop. "It's one of the last male domains in the city," says Ciaran Coughlan. "Our customers come in for a bit of peace," he says, "and you can't blame them either." Oh, God bless us, no. Na fir bochta.
Black-haired Patricia Fernandez, who plays the tempestuous Rosina in the company's upcoming The Barber of Seville, is there too, having just flown in from Paris. Rosina, she says, "has a lot of personality. She's very smart, very young and she likes joking and she falls in love with a count." What a gal!
Sam McElroy, who will play the Barber, says the aria, Figaro, Figaro, is "fine to listen to but very hard to sing". With that he has to lie back, think of Ireland and wait to be creamed, pummelled and shaved. Once his face is wrapped in a hot towel, all we can do is move on. Who is the man in the snakeskin shoes? Tall Gideon Saks is to sing the lead in the Russian opera, Boris Godunov. He admits to having a shoe fetish. He has just flown in from Berlin.
Gideon has sung the part of the Tzar Boris before but never in the original Russian. "Apparently my Russian is rather good," he says in a deep booming voice. "But I'm half Ukrainian, quarter Polish and quarter Lithuanian - maybe it's that." After the opera in Dublin, he's off to New York and Toronto.
Kristin Smyth, from Melbourne, is having a rest after co-ordinating the Gate Theatre's staging of the Beckett Festival at the Barbican in London. She chats to Jack Gilligan, Dublin Corporation's arts officer.
Sprouting another fine moustache is David Collopy, general manager of Opera Ireland. His interest in opera started in Wexford in the 1970s, he says. An accountant by profession, he explains that no opera company in the world is in the black. "Opera is always perilous," he says. Still, last year they sold out and this year they expect to do the same.
The season runs at the Gaiety from November 20th until November 28th.